Humor is arguably Britain's finest export. It's bold, witty, and full of puns, and can knock you out almost instantly. In fact, hands down the funniest person I know is from Manchester, England. (He also wrote for Bored Panda, so if you've been reading us for long enough, you might even know who I'm talking about.)
So let's take a closer look at the culture that molds it. Spanning across multiple social media platforms, British Memes is an online project that paints a vivid picture of what everyday life looks like in this corner of the world.
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absolutly, the later the better. Post lunch me doesnt want to be sat working for hours and hours after eating
English comedian Ricky Gervais, who co-wrote, co-produced, and starred in the hit BBC series The Office, which was on air for two years and adapted for a U.S. series for eight seasons, thinks that a good way to describe British humor is to juxtapose it to its American counterpart.
"It's often dangerous to generalize, but under threat, I would say that Americans are more 'down the line,'" Gervais wrote in TIME. "They don't hide their hopes and fears. They applaud ambition and openly reward success."
"Brits are more comfortable with life's losers. We embrace the underdog until it's no longer the underdog. We like to bring authority down a peg or two. Just for the hell of it," Gervais explained.
"Americans say, 'have a nice day' whether they mean it or not. Brits are terrified to say this. We tell ourselves it's because we don't want to sound insincere but I think it might be for the opposite reason. We don't want to celebrate anything too soon."
Gervais thinks Brits see failure and disappointment lurk around every corner. This is due to their upbringing. While Americans are raised to believe they can be the next president, Brits are told, "It won't happen for you."
The comedian also pointed out that while irony shows up in the smarter US comedies, Americans don't use it as much socially as Brits. "We use it as liberally as prepositions in everyday speech. We tease our friends. We use sarcasm as a shield and a weapon. We avoid sincerity until it’s absolutely necessary," he said. "We mercilessly take the piss out of people we like or dislike basically. And ourselves. This is very important. Our brashness and swagger is laden with equal portions of self-deprecation. This is our license to hand it out."
This, Gervais has found, is sometimes perceived as nasty by the 'recipients' who aren't used to such customs, but he reassured everyone that it isn't. "It’s play fighting," he explained. "It's almost a sign of affection if we like you, and ego bursting if we don't. You just have to know which one it is."
"I never actively try to offend. That's churlish, pointless and frankly too easy. But I believe you should say what you mean. Be honest. No one should ever be offended by truth. That way you'll never have to apologize. I hate it when a comedian says, 'Sorry for what I said.' You shouldn't say it if you didn't mean it and you should never regret anything you meant to do."
Ditto, but yelling HONK because I don't have a horn earns me strange looks.
Another thing that the rest of the world may not know is that in the UK nothing and nobody is off-limits, so you will regularly see politicians being ridiculed and anybody in the public eye, including the Royal Family, is fair game.
No wonder satire is so popular in the UK. As Gervais briefly mentioned, Brits love humbling people when they get too arrogant and there have been many comedy shows dedicated to exactly this type of humor, including Have I Got News For You and Weekly Wipe.
Love island is awful. It's the kind of show that makes having root canal treatment a pleasure. Nothing to do with love and everything to do with getting a job in TV or getting a modelling career off the ground.
But the UK has also had a number of hit sitcoms where pretty much nothing happens apart from everyday life. There are no knee-slapping moments but a lot of cringey situations when you cannot believe someone has done or said what they have.
These sitcoms are subtle but absurdly funny and ones worth watching are Gavin and Tracy, I'm Alan Partridge, and The Royle Family.
I hope they have good hygiene standards for preventing covid, otherwise on your last day, you'll be leaving a little hoarse.
I looked it up (I'm sick and have nothing better to do): they're red spider mites and are considered a pest as they kill plants, so I guess they've been killed off with insecticide. Thanks for occupying my brain with something other than how ill I'm feeling for a few minutes!
Lugging letters and parcels around in the heat for hours (then the snow/rain/ice in winter), worried if Tyson the territorial rottweiler will actually get one of your fingers this time.... No thanks.
In the U.S., the phrase "going postal" has somewhat less placid connotations.
My babysitter lost her husband in the first incident. Had to get a new sitter as she had to return to full time work.
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i did a year in the post office, ive never met such a group of angry people in my life.
I managed to last 4 years. We had one carrier that came in looking angry all the time. Turns out he was always hung over from the heavy drinking every day. A good chunk of my office were discharged Marines, maybe that had something to do with it?
Load More Replies... The posties I see are walking fast, becos they have to cover a lot of ground. Sometimes they have to do extra, still working at 6pm. And you can't just do the job for the summer months -- do you get Christmas cards in the post?
In America the post workers are timed and bid on how long a route will take them to do. It's insane
This is definitely British. In America, we have the term "going postal" for a reason.
August 20 1986. Postal worker Patrick Sherrill in Oklahoma City shot and killed 14 people and wounded 6 or 7 others at the Edmond Post Office. https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-origin-of-going-postal-90992ce6fa6a
I’m pretty sure that the phrase “going postal” came about due to the number of posties who have gone on murderous rampages
British culture. Idk anyone talking about drinking cider, maybe stolen liquor or beer though.
What's stopping her is that the lowest amount you can withdraw at a cashpoint is £5.00 :D
what do you consider snacks? I'm in the Midwest US. we do popcorn, chips (crisps), beef jerky. curious to what other cultures snack on.
I knew a guy who was always 23 minutes late. We ended up telling his to be places 25 minutes earlier than we were due to start. It made a serious difference, and we could start things on time.
Note: this post originally had 101 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
This appears to be a list of random content with an unconnected title.
This is a clickbait site that steals it's content from other sites. I wouldn't be surprised if I were you.
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All in all, a very poor collection, the result pf poor editing. Very few of the examples are particularly British. Also, the headline is a grammatical blunder. Loved the toasted cheese, though.
This appears to be a list of random content with an unconnected title.
This is a clickbait site that steals it's content from other sites. I wouldn't be surprised if I were you.
Load More Replies... All in all, a very poor collection, the result pf poor editing. Very few of the examples are particularly British. Also, the headline is a grammatical blunder. Loved the toasted cheese, though.
