Celebrities are finally getting in on the 'it me' joke

It should not be a surprise that celebrities know you're tweeting about them.

Lately, though, they've really been showing it. This summer, Laura Dern, Angela Kinsey, and Kim Kardashian have all responded to tweets about themselves with a particular self-awareness that's gotten lots of attention.

Each of the tweets to which they've responded involves, in some way, the celebrity's public persona. For example, the most recent one describes "being the Kim Kardashian of the family" as "exhausting."

"I feel you," Kardashian West replied.

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Another, from Netflix fan site NetflixLife, asks people which character from The Office they are. Angela Kinsey, who spent eight years playing Angela on The Office, replied "Angela."

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This seems to have originated back in June when the brand account for HBO asked its audience to "retweet if you're Laura Dern," they meant it in the corny "it me" way -- a move typical of Brand Twitter. But Laura Dern replied perfectly with "I AM!"

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Each of the celebrities' tweets was at least moderately successful. Kinsey's, which was favorited over 730,000 times, was enormously so.

It's not like the original tweets were celebrity bait -- Kinsey wasn't even mentioned in the Office tweet, and no one expects a mega-celebrity like Kim Kardashian to respond to them. What it reveals, perhaps, is that everyone's aware of the function of celebrity personas in meme culture. Do celebrities search their own names on Twitter? Probably. Do they know that you (and the MoonPie account or whatever) are constantly invoking their personas for clout? Certainly.

It's likely, then, that these responses are so popular because they transcend, and thus briefly render irrelevant, 2018's tired viral economy. There are hundreds of branded quizzes to tell us which Office character we are. There are thousands of tweets about Kim Kardashian. And yes, Laura Dern is cool as hell. We don't need to participate in the "me AF" meme race to know that.

But being the Kim of the family does sound exhausting.