45 Unexplained Images That Challenge Visual Perception

A whopping 1.92 million people follow the r/hmmm subreddit, and we can’t wait for that number to hit a solid, round 2 million soon. The online community puts deep absurdity first and raises contextless humor to an art form.

For instance, every single post has to have the word ‘hmmm’ in the title. And God forbid that you use an uppercase ‘H’ instead of a lowercase ‘h’! We can barely imagine the horror. 

“hmmms are textless images that make you think about the context, do a double take, invoke a deeper meaning, or just leave you thinking about how or why they exist. As long as they give you a good solid hmmm... why would that bear be in a cubicle… hmmms should be aesthetic and meaningful, avoid anything that is merely r/mildlyinteresting,” the moderator team running the show explains.

Meanwhile, if you plan on posting stuff on the subreddit, then you should probably read the full list of rules. Thankfully, r/hmmm has an incredibly detailed FAQ that deals with the nitty-gritty details of what’s expected from members, what’s (dis)allowed, and what type of humor is best shared on other subreddits.

During a friendly earlier interview, Bored Panda had a chat about the sub with the head moderator of r/hmmm, u/CosmicKeys. They told us about the history of the community and the changes that came along throughout the years.

"The idea for /r/hmmm was to create a highly curated subreddit with a quality bar where all the pictures are interesting, meaningful, aesthetic, and shine a light on how random image culture on the internet had become its own genre of art. I think we are popular because we maintain this quality bar," the head mod shared with us.

"The titles are all 'hmmm' because it means you can experience the image without someone forcing their personal interpretation onto it in the form of a title. Whether it's funny or sad is up to you to determine. It is also about purity. In order for your post to go through, you need to submit to a rigid tradition. People willing to do that generally care enough to post excellent content,” they explained to Bored Panda.

"/r/hmmm was founded in 2016 by users from snoonet irc. It was technically created in 2008, but had no activity up until that point, so 2016 is the real creation date," they said that, technically, the subreddit’s founding date is very different from the one we can see online.

"I would post daily pictures while chat was going for people to laugh at oddities from different corners of the internet. That grew into a large collection, so /r/hmmm was born. The name comes from a thread that would appear occasionally on 4chan, and the content was inspired by a website called spaceghetto," u/CosmicKeys said.

"The subreddit is about obscure and strange images, so over time as certain types of images have gone from obscure to popular we've made rules to exclude them," they hinted that, as internet culture changes, so does the sub.

Meanwhile, comedy writer Ariane Sherine also shared her thoughts with Bored Panda about bizarre internet content. “The weirder and more surprising the photo, the more likely it is to make us laugh,” she told us.

“I tend to laugh the most at animals pulling human expressions while doing crazy things!” she shared what gets her giggling the hardest.

According to the comedy expert, humor is instantaneous. Meanwhile, context is essential only if there’s a total lack of it and if that limits the audience’s ability to ‘get’ the joke. As such, if you can’t relate to a joke, meme, or image, you might end up asking for someone to explain them to you. And that kills a lot of the comedic effect.

“Context is important only if we’re unlikely to get a joke otherwise, as I think the sooner we get a joke, the funnier we find it. If it takes us a while then that initial shock and surprise is delayed and so we’re less likely to laugh and more likely to go ‘oh, I get it now!’” Ariane said.

“Some people are born with funny bones, but those who aren’t so lucky could watch a lot of great standup comedy and try to emulate the timing and pace. There are also some excellent comedy courses available online,” the comedy writer noted that everyone can improve their comedic timing with a bit of research and practice.