Kombucha Girl

On August 6, 2019, Brittany Tomlinson—a 22-year-old bank teller from Dallas—pointed her phone at herself and took a sip of kombucha. What followed was eight seconds of facial gymnastics that would define a generation's relationship with ambivalence.

"It smells like a public restroom," she declared before drinking anyway. Her face then cycled through disgust, reconsideration, tentative approval, renewed disgust, and something approaching enlightenment. Within three days, the TikTok had 1.8 million likes. Within a week, Brittany Broski was internet royalty.

The genius of Kombucha Girl lay in its universality. Everyone has experienced that exact emotional journey—trying something you're not sure about, hating it, then somehow talking yourself into maybe not hating it. The two-panel format that emerged captured life's eternal "no... unless?" energy better than words ever could.

She occupied the same spiritual territory as Drake's Hotline Bling format—the sacred church of binary reactions, the temple of "this but not that." Where Drake offered cool detachment and approval, Brittany provided chaotic ambivalence and reluctant acceptance. They were not parent and child but parallel evolution: two formats solving the same problem from different emotional angles.

By late 2019, the format had been strip-mined for every conceivable contrast. Brittany herself pivoted to comedy content creation, leaving her fermented-tea-drinking self behind. The meme had served its purpose, perfectly encapsulating our collective inability to have a simple opinion about anything.

She came for the probiotics. She stayed for the clout. She left us all a little more uncertain.