“F*ck My Life” – the iconic phrase, born out of the website FMyLife.com which altered the vocabulary of almost everyone I knew from 2008 onward, has achieved the next level of fame – in France. In fact, not many Americans would be happy to know that the “FML” phrase was not designed by California Brogrammers or College Hipsters, but by a group of French programmers, who originally launched the service in French, under the name VieDeMerde (VDM). Its early success led the team to launch a US version, which is now as popular in the US as it is in France – the site also exists in Italian, Polish, Indonesian, Turkish, Spanish, Russian & Swedish. FML.
Now, FML is coming to television – or, at least, its management team is. The new show, “The FML Management Team,” will follow the FML office under the pretense that the team members are responsible for validating claims from individuals that a “FML” incident happened in their life. The trailer (& above photo) has a sort of “The Office” meets “The Dating Game” feel to it, and almost every joke revolves around the FML theme. In each episode, individuals who have had a “FML moment” must come to the DMV (préfecture, for the French)-style office and declare officially that they had a FML moment.
While one of the main characters is called Maxime, the site’s creators, Maxime Valette & Guillaume Passaglia, will not take part in the show, but instead have licensed the rights to the FML(VDM) trademark to the show’s creators. UPDATE: we previously repeated speculation that the cofounders had licensed the show, but have since received the following statement from Maxime Valette:
A quick note, we didn’t license the rights, we’re co-producers of the show — the goal is to control our brand and make the best show possible with our creator’s look at every step.
Will the show be a huge hit? Who knows. If the show has some success the US has developed quite a bad habit of adopting successful foreign TV shows and bringing them to the US, whether it be the British version of The Office or the Australian version of Wilfred (and, please, don’t anyone mention the Swedish version of the Millenium Series).
As digital pop culture slowly becomes the only pop culture, I predict we’ll see more attempts by TV Shows to adopt internet sensations into monetize-able TV Shows. The Music Industry has already been shaken up by the fact that too many pop music stars are coming from YouTube – Justin Bieber, Carly Rae, Mackelmore, etc. – and not their music headhunters.
Someone just told me that the US’s latest internet sensation, 40 Days of Dating, has signed over the rights to Hollywood for a show that will come out, in 12 months – I’m sure people will have forgotten about it by then.