The Mariah Carey New Year's Eve Performance Fail stems from her disastrous live set during Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 2017. Plagued by technical malfunctions and earbud issues, Mariah stopped singing several times, paced the stage awkwardly, and eventually gave up on lip-syncing entirely, telling the crowd, 'It is what it is.' The footage immediately went viral, becoming the ultimate symbol of a situation spiraling out of control. It is now widely used to represent moments of extreme unpreparedness, 'faking it until you make it' failures, or simply the feeling of 100% done-ness when faced with insurmountable obstacles.