
Hard work never looked so fun. A photo by Diana Walker, initially published in TIME in November 2011, showed the Secretary of State engrossed in her BlackBerry while on an airplane en route to Libya. What exactly Hillary Clinton was typing, and to whom, the world may never know. But that just makes it more fun to speculate. That’s exactly what Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe, two D.C.-based politicos, dreamt up in April, juxtaposing other famous politicians and celebrities who appeared to be texting Hillary, with the Secretary of State texting back snarky messages. Their very first post, which received more than 13,000 reblogs on Tumblr, began with President Obama, in repose on a couch, texting “Hey Hil, Watchu doing?” The Secretary of State, with her stoic expression and staid attire, is imagined to text back “Running the world.” In just a few days, Texts from Hillary became a meme that traversed the world faster than Clinton herself. It lasted a mere week, between April 4 and April 11, but featured celebrities like Ryan Gosling and Anna Wintour texting Madame Secretary. The meme came full circle when the usually polished politician submitted her own image to Texts from Hillary, featuring a text thanking Lambe and Smith “for the many LOLZ.”