Inside 'Facebook Wine Mom' culture, where hundreds of thousands of women share memes about wine, coffee, and their kids

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My favorite person on Facebook is a 58-year-old woman we'll refer to as Nancy. Nancy is the mother of an old college friend. We became friends on Facebook my sophomore year of college, when Facebook opened up its network of users to include those outside the walls of higher education.

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It has been nearly 10 years since Nancy and I became friends, and I look forward to seeing her status updates every day. Why? Because Nancy is a "Facebook Wine Mom."

Facebook Wine Mom

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Okay so you're probably wondering, what or who is a Facebook Wine Mom? But you probably already know one! She's a mom who posts about it "being 5'oclock somewhere!" or "needing an IV of pinot grigio!" She's the 60-year-old equivalent of a high school junior who had their first box of Franzia in someone's basement.

The term was first mentioned on Twitter, according to Topsy, by user @capecodkyrakyra on March 24 of this year. But a few weeks earlier, the definition had been added to UrbanDictionary.com as: 

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Wine Mom

Urban Dictionary

Though there is no mention of social media or Facebook in the UrbanDictionary.com defnition, that's usually where the wine moms unite. But don't be fooled. Being a Facebook Wine Mom isn't just about loving alcohol. Facebook Wine Moms can be found posting memes or updates about needing coffee, vacations, weekends, or ice cream.

Facebook Wine Mom

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Sometimes they post about their kids or husbands.

Other times they post about wishing their kids or husbands would leave them alone.

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Facebook Wine Mom

SomeECards

And their not just using Facebook - you can find wine moms on Instagram and Pinterest, too.

I find Facebook Wine Mom culture both endearing and entertaining. 

The post below, a promo for a floating wine glass that also can be propped up in the sand, was endlessly shared by the moms I am friends with on Facebook. For days. For weeks! The sharing never, ever, ended. Originally posted by a radio station's page on June 8, the ad haunts me to this day. (Weirdly, radio stations share insane amounts of Facebook Wine Mom content.)

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There's something to be said for this.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post's Caitlin Dewey wrote "How Moms Won the Internet," explaining to us millennial folk that while we might be the most savvy at internetting, we are not the intended audience for the majority of massively viral content ricocheting around the web, coming from sites like Little Things, or Viral Nova, which craft grabby headlines that play into readers' emotions and get millions of monthly visitors.

"... Moms are both "more clicky" and more eager to share," Dewey writes, then shares "the words of Viral Nova CEO Sean Beckner: 'To them, Facebook represents a highly intimate social club, a place to share pictures of your kids and requests for health advice and that video of a puppy sleeping with a baby that almost made you cry.'"

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Unlike their children, Facebook Wine Moms (baby boomers) are not in the mindset of developing or curating their internet personas. They are not self-conscious. They, unlike their kids, are not out to convince everyone their life is perfect through a series of carefully crafted filtered photos.

In fact, they unite to revel in the fact that their lives aren't perfect!

Facebook Wine Moms are the best.

A popular Facebook group "Moms Who Need Wine" has 700,000 fans (a quick search confirmed four of those fans are moms I know, and none of those moms know each other.)

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MWNW is a site, a blog that at first glace, looks like it was created to be a community for moms to connect with one another and share (what else) memes. But it's also a business - partnered with the California Wine Club to provide wine in bulk to its readers for a price club dollar amount. 

Facebook Wine Mom

Moms Who Need Wine

In 2011, when MWNW had 400,000 fans, The Huffington Post wrote that wine is increasingly being marketed to moms, citing these online communities. Former HuffPo reporter Laura Stampler wrote at the time:

These popular sites serve as a virtual mother's group where moms with a sense of humor vent about day-to-day parenting issues. One "Mom Who Needs Wine" recently asked the group if she was the only one who had ever served her child Oreos for breakfast. (The Answer? Oreos are a kind-of justifiable food group.) On OMG, one mom declared, "it's probably going to be a long summer when you look at a bottle of wine & think about making homemade popsicles with it."

Brian Feldman, writing for The Awl, explains the worst meme the internet has to offer: The Minion memes. And Tech Insider's Molly Mulshine took note that there's no one more obsessed with Minion memes than moms.

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But what do their children make of their Facebook Wine Moms? Turns out it has given them something to aspire to.

A quick Twitter search for "Facebook Wine Mom" yields mostly the same kind of tweet: 

 

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For the haters out there, I encourage you to embrace Facebook Wine Mom culture instead of making fun of it.

After all ...

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Facebook Wine Mom

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