1 Tree For Every Pet Picture
I don’t know how much longer we have as a society if people keep falling for Instagram giveaways. I know we don’t need much to post pictures of our pets and there’s nothing wrong with flimsy excuses but stop doing things because everyone else is doing it. Especially on Instagram. Instagram is where original thought goes to die. It’s where we all go to get infected with low self esteem. This time it’s fine but everyone is on notice and I will not be as forgiving next time we all do whatever Instagram tells us.
Do Not Buy….
Finally Twitter has developed an environmental storytelling meme. Leaving connections to be made in our heads instead of spelled out like we usually do. They're at the very least creative. The joke requires a little bit of thought and craft rather than just regurgitating references. It’s not a lot of creativity but there’s plenty of places to go with Plan B Shein as our starting point. This meme feels like a joke that would really do well in local circles. Something like “Do not buy Ms Jenkins Rice Krispy treats at the drama club bake sale” would kill in a group chat of mean moms. College meme pages, if they still exist, should be ripe with this meme about the most disgusting thing one could order at the dining hall.
Masculine/Feminine Urge
I feel like every three months or so we have a meme that’s just “girls do this and boys do this” but it’s never that serious. Everyone just wants to assign their desires to their own grand unified theory of their own gender. I think at their most insidious the “feminine urge” versions become not a joke and are very “girls like being weak and cooking and the color pink”. I don’t want to write it off completely because some people can get creative and funny but for the most part they’re duds. Even the funniest one will not be that funny. I hope the rest of you are having fun, because I’m certainly not.
Justin Bieber Rage Comic
We’re toeing the line of a full rage comic revival. We have been for a while but this meme pushes us ever closer. What makes this meme different is that people are actually memeing with it, rather than just reposting one from the old days. We’re engaging with the format and posting it sincerely. Not only is the format old school, but the content is old school as well. The joke is not only that girls are picking obscure things over a pop star, but that the pop star is Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber hasn’t been the it boy of teens and tweens for almost ten years. Everything about this meme is vintage and besides that it’s just a good meme. Stick to the classics and they’ll always deliver. This meme is like shooting on film. The old ways still work and are often better and more beautiful than the new ways.
Dune Guy
Dune! Dune! Dune! We all have Dune fever and the kids are showing it by making memes about their favorite character, Thufir Hawat played by teen heartthrob Stephen McKinley. This meme feels like a psyop because it's the most simple meme one could make given the full 2 hours and 36 minutes of the movie. It’s just about thinking or remembering things. If this is the best the marketing department could come up with, someone should be fired. All of my fellow Dune heads are coming up with much more creative organic memes daily. Of course there’s nothing with as wide an appeal. However our memes actually reference the source material and could give the uninitiated a peek into the incredible world of Arrakis. No matter what, we can all agree that this is a win for Stephen McKinley, one of our finest actors and teen heartthrobs.
Look How She’s Looking At Me
I don’t think this has a long shelf life as a copypasta. I read the Chris Pratt post before the meme and even I had to look up what this was from. This is one of those memes where people’s contempt shines through more than their desire to be funny. As many people said, that’s just how evangelical’s talk, especially when they’re trying to hide that they’re evangelical. It’s fine to have contempt for those people, but just go mask off. We hate Chris Pratt because underneath his aw shucks former good boy energy he’s a Jesus freak. Also because anyone with a brain has put together by now that he wants to run for president at some point, which we all agree is bad. It’s fine to be angry and hate celebrities but don’t make memes to hide that anger. Just be angry.
Tiktok
There’s Not Going To Be A Swimming Pool
It’s good to temper our expectations. It’s also good to laugh at our younger selves for overestimating our own capabilities and ambition. A great self effacing meme for a generation that seems to have forgotten how to laugh it off. We don’t need to blame everything on trauma and the pain of growing older. Sometimes it’s good to just laugh at how dumb you were as child, because you were a child and children are dumb. There’s simply not going to be a swimming pool you stupid slut!
The Woman Was Too Stunned To Speak
Some of you are easily knocked speechless. This meme suffers from a problem a lot of TikTok memes suffer from… not interesting enough! Boring! Who cares! It’s also a great set up for story times and I simply can’t endorse that. Most of these people cannot tell a story succinctly. We don’t know you! These details are erroneous! Get to the point!! The good ones are good though. A real shocking family secret from a stranger is good every once in a while.
Ladies, what are we doing? It seems like we’re running out of ideas when it comes to creating interiority. Maybe the men were right and we are boring. I don’t care that it’s a joke. It’s a joke for girls who aren’t funny. It’s a joke to prove that you are capable of making jokes but you’re not actually funny. You’re too preoccupied with creating a mysterious personality, which everyone knows cannot be crafted. But maybe I don’t get it because I’ve never been preoccupied with beauty.
They Don’t Know I Know This Hack
Now this is Women being funny in a way I can endorse. I love being stupid on purpose. It’s my favorite way to entertain myself and others. There’s no joke like pretending to be a dumbass. Every new “hack” people come up with elicits genuine laughter from me. There’s nothing like it. Bold faced stupid ideas that will land you in jail with the wry of smile of acting like you’ve won. Or even better when the hack is, I just do it and live with the consequences. Like a hack for ordering pizza that is just ordering pizza before you ask your husband so he can’t say no. This is what I want more of. Pure idiocy, on purpose.
At Burger King With My Burger Queen
This meme is incredible for a lot of reasons. First, the creator is the same person who created Christian Girl Autumn. I love when people can achieve virality and influence over multiple platforms. It speaks to not only her creativity but also her mastery of the language of the internet. She knows the same schtick won’t work everywhere and changes her approach from platform to platform. Second, this meme has to spread through other people’s creativity. Most memes on TikTok require half the effort. The sound is done for us and we just have to more or less repeat what others are doing with our own spin. Here the only thing one can copy is the cadence of the original. The lyrics have to be rewritten for each video and most importantly, the fast food chain has to be different. It requires knowledge of the original but one must ultimately start from scratch to contribute.
This kind of loose chain of connection makes the meme fun to witness and track for someone like me, who spends 8 hours a day on the app. But for simpletons and the uninformed it can create problems, especially when it comes to giving credit where it’s due. TikTok, both the app and the community, are horrible at giving credit in an easily accessible way that makes everyone happy. I don’t have a solution but it would be so much easier to track these things if users could somehow create a throughline from their videos to videos that reference their original creation. Or if others could od it for the original creator. While the people copying the original were trying their best to give credit, it was not always clear. We even got to the point where someone who made an exact copy of the original video ended up getting a lot more views and likes. Memes like this, that play with the format of traditional TikTok memes are great for creativity and breaking up the monotony of the app, but when they require new solutions that have to be crowdsourced, it can end up leaving the creator in the dust.
I am going to expire if I have to watch another one of these. I know it’s cuffing season but you all need to chill. You all absolutely need to chill the fuck out. No one cares about your happiness in a relationship other than you. Especially when the way these people are showing off their happiness is the kind of comfortable intimacy that comes with years of knowing each other. Stop showing me the romance of people who know that love is in the simple things and small moments. I want to see over confident declarations of love because at least then I know those people are performing for an audience because they’re unhappy in some ways. These people are too happy and I frankly don’t want to see it.
I Was Far Too Scared To Hit Him
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