What's a better form of entertainment in this digital age than scrolling through some funny memes? Especially when you've had a really tough day or week. Sometimes, even your favorite show or movie seems to require too much brain power. So opting for a quick but effective fix in the form of some random memes is often your best bet.
Today, we're featuring a community that shares hilarious content daily. The Funny AF Spiritual Memes group has 2 million members, so you know you're in safe hands, Pandas. Scroll down and entertain yourself with some memes about this weird thing we call life. And read on for our exploration of how memes have become a language in their own right.
This post may include affiliate links.
This could be a monetized service. There should be an app for this!
At this point, most of us are familiar with what the word 'meme' means. In 1976, Richard Dawkins called it "ideas that spread from brain to brain." In today's Internet culture, that's especially apt because memes tend to spread like wildfire on different social media platforms. The more accurate description for today would perhaps be that the ideas spread from device to device.
The first example of what memes look like is an image from the Judge Magazine issue in 1921. It's the original "Expectations vs. Reality" type of picture. Yet people don't consider it to technically be a meme. Why? Because it didn't have the virality aspect. For a picture, a video, or a quote to become a meme, people have to copy it and share it.
Nowadays, what we consider to be memes is so widely known that even a non-chronically online person would know them. There probably isn't a young person who wouldn't recognize Drake gesturing 'nuh-uh' from his "Hotline Bling" video or that screenshot from an anime with the butterfly with the caption "Is this [blank]?"
Yet, it is a sort of secret language. More niche memes allow individuals with similar interests to communicate things others might not know about. One person could be well-versed in philosophy memes but know absolutely nothing when they see a Formula 1 meme.
Linguist Rebecca Garcia claims that memes are not so much a language of their own but a graphic form of speech. "Just as language and writing is a form of communication, so are memes. Even though these images incorporate only short written messages, they’re usually understood by the receiver or audience."
Summer vacation is such an anachronism. When I was in college I started taking summer courses and they were a total game changer. I finished a year of Organic Chemistry in four months. Those intensive summer courses are great for knocking out the big ones like that.
I wish I could have taken Biochem like that, I absolutely hated it. Took microbiology over the summer and had an incredible teacher, loved it
Load More Replies...I love summer in England, because all other seasons are just rain, summer is nice sunny weather and you can actually go outside and do stuff
No.... I actually love the heat that summer brings... Give me +30°C year round and I'm a happy camper ETA currently where I live (Vancouver Island) it is pretty much, my idea, of spring year round. I moved here from a place where winter sits around -15 to -50°C and summer was between 20 to 40°C. There was no spring or fall, just second winter, third winter, and then second summer, and third summer. The change over would go from winter to summer at like -30°c one day then the very next would be +30°c, it was that drastic/quick!
I respect your preferences. When I read your statement, I literally said "ew" lol
Load More Replies...Yes, where I live summe ris the only season you can sit outside without your jacket on, if you're lucky. Also our winters are soooo dark.
Load More Replies...I love summer. I don't have to wear shoes, I can forget about coats, ice, fuel bills. The days are longs.
I love that nice one week of spring when there are virtually no canker worms hanging from trees, no mosquitoes trying to feast on you, no yellow jackets chasing you around, no horseflies biting, there's green grass, blossoms on the trees and leaves, the sun is warmer but not too hot, nice breezes, and you wish all of summer was like this. The rest of summer is smoke from wildfires, bugs, construction, listening to lawnmowers what seems like all day, everyday, listening to cars tears down the streets at night. Winter is no picnic, either.
I don't like summer for emotional reasons. Give me spring any time please, lengthening days and the hills turning green.
This is weirdly true. Take a week off with no plans in summer and it’s like “yes good idea, enjoy the weather in your garden”. Take a week off in another season and people be like “ah you must be flying a very long distance to find a sunny place”
Absolutely categorically NOT. Late spring, summer and esrly fall are the best. All the light. The warmth. The life. The green. The beach. The sun. The people. Everything. The world is open and full of color and livable again. If I had the means I would live a semi-nomaduc life, staying in different hemispheres for 6 months just to never have to live theough a winter, ever again.
Someone stuck in a permanent summer down under would.
Load More Replies...Summer time off all came about due to the teachers not wanting to work in schools without A/C. . .!
It's only going to be 91° here today but the humidity is already 666%. 😭
I like summer because there is no heating bill, and i don't freeze on the street.
Here in the Rockies, our summer is July. So it isn't that bad. It is the winter that kills ya. It lasts from Sep to May.
Still acting like the weekend is something special after my baby is born.
Aw, you will have to grow up soon Bomgeisha...life is reality sucky or not
I don't know why people love summer. It's burning hot. Impossible to sleep at night. Downright uncomfortable.
Summer is my favorite season. Love the heat. Love the activities. Love the wildlife and traveling. Love the bonfires. Let people love what they love
Nope. I like summer because i can go to the beach, i can wear less clothes, i can wear sandals (i hate shoes), i don't have to worry about the bills because there is more sunlight and no need for heating etc. I don't like that summers are getting hotter, like last year in my city we had 42 degrees celsius, but i still prefer summer to winter. Also in summer i get 20 consecutive days of paid vacation from work, which is neat.
I've always loved summer and hated winter, but a few years ago my body said, nah, we're switching this up. It's the weirdest thing to like winter more than summer.
Depends on your location. Summer in Seattle was amazing. Summer in NC is hell's back porch
Decades of physical work will definitely move summer to the bottom of the favourite seasons list.
It's quite pleasant, actually, but I get the idea. I stopped fearing September 1st some 10 years after graduation from UNIVERSITY. And finally began enjoying my birthday (September second).
I HATE summer. I want to live somewhere that never gets hot.
late spring or early fall, not too hot yet but not freezing cold either
Agreed. Mid May walking outside in Florida at 3:30am was like walking into an oven
I love summer because I get a break from school work and I just get to eat snacks at 1:00 PM in the day. And listen to music.
It's the opposite for me. I've always loved the season, but as kid I was always wishing we would switch to year round school and not have 9 to 10 weeks off.
It's terrible for learning to have that much time off in a row.
Load More Replies...Until I got out of high school, summer meant waterskiing, but winter meant SNOWMOBILING. Now I do neither, but suffer terribly in the heat. 🤦🏻♀️ I don’t understand how people beyond 18 enjoy the summer. In winter, you can always warm up (blankets are our friends!), but you can’t always cool off in summer. It’s only midway through July, and I’m sick to death of the throwing up and the fainting. (Every morning, I count my bruises from the latter.) I’m starting to hope the summer kills me so I don’t hafta go through this again. Argh.
Mens beauty line is starting to expand more and more. Eventually it'll be as bad as wonens. Just give it some time.
Memes don't represent the way we write. They're an expression of how we talk. The way we speak is more informal than how we express ourselves in writing. "We mirror our speech patterns in memes. Therefore, when we communicate with memes, we are communicating with a graphic form of speech," Garcia writes in her Public Linguist blog.
Got it. Develop the most attractive allergic reaction ever to makeup.
You don't want to absorb too much serotonin. you need a field of it per se, to allow proper neuron communication. People with low serotonin are put on SSRI meds(Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor). This slows the re-absorption of serotonin, allowing the levels in the brain to rise and re-establishing effective neural firing (the lack of which can cause depression. I have inherited GAD anxiety myself, so SSRI meds don't work. I take SNRI [Selective Noradrenaline Reuptake Inhibitors] meds instead, as Noradrenaline is to anxiety as Serotonin is to depression).
We tend to communicate through pictures on social media more than with words. We send GIFs, emojis, and, of course, memes. But with memes, it's not about the image itself. In 2015, researcher Walter Jose Castañeda concluded in his study that the meme image is what matters, not the image in the meme. "[Memes] obviate any relationship that their components may have with the image from which they originate," he wrote.
When someone sends you a meme with a tearful cat, the conversation doesn't actually have anything to do with cats. The text and the context of the conversation seemingly have nothing in common with the cat picture. But when put together, they make up a complete composition and we get its meaning.
Memes also have a strange power of bringing people together. They are a reflection of Netlore (Internet folklore) and reflect many different facets of the human experience. What was once an easy and new way to joke around with friends online is turning into a community-building engine. It's not just about the many faces of Doge and Pepe anymore -- memes now can be way deeper than that.
"We can see not just the new ways people do things or the new ways people express themselves in public but also some of the themes, some of the anxieties or desires people have. All of these complex issues are reflected in things like memes," Director of the Centre for Digital Culture at Kings College London Paolo Gerbaudo told the BBC.
I was walking and found a snail on the sidewalk so I brought it with me to the park and then when I got home I worried it would be lost so I went back and got him and brought him to the area I found him and that was 1987 but I still think of that snail.
Memes can help people feel less alone during hard times (this was especially evident during the pandemic), but they also can help marginalized communities. Sharing memes is a great way to build a collective identity. The founder of the Meme Studies Research Network, Idil Galip, said that this collective sense of identity even bleeds into real life.
My parents have accepted that my cat is an important family member and they let me show them her photos and videos, and they watch it happily. My mum sometimes even asks if my cat ate food or not.
"Niche memes are not meant to go viral," Galip explained. "They're meant usually to create things like in-group belonging, something that kind of strengthens a sense of identity." It's similar to speaking another language. If you ever stumble upon a meme that you don't entirely understand, it might just be that it's not for you.
Young My Idiotic Imagination That Keeps Making Mind Movies And Singing Assorted Ivycomb Songs When I Need To Pay Attention Or Sleep Why Can't I Ditch This Brain And Get A New One
If someone gives me a simple math problem (2+2) I panic and shout 847
Trauma bonding isn’t two people bonding over trauma. It is what abusers do to keep their victim closer to them. The behavioral sciences are very clear about that but people still use it incorrectly.
The knowledge that your PC takes 4 minutes to boot, and it's 20 seconds to the desk is very dangerous when you work from home and have a snooze button.
OMG. Never going to NYC again with someone who thinks Grand Central is just a block from Battery Park. I’ve been suckered twice and that is enough. Didn’t mind the walk, but I rather have spent the time at the Strand.
I am an Aries and had one junior who was Aries. I surely hated her guts. I was talking about her to another colleague who pointed out I was worst before I changed my ways.
gonna send that to my bestie… js kidding i woulda had to kill her she knows too much
Quite literally. Got back on my rollercoaster videos nonsense recently and suddenly I have an incredible urge to get to Six Flags.
We need more of these, fewer AITAH stories (only the really good ones), and zero celebrity/TikTok updates
I often wonder if anyone even reads the text by the b.p. "authors" or if everyone ignores it and just reads the memes. I also often wonder how low one's iq has to be in order to think that their comments are seen by the people whose memes are curated for these "articles"
I never read the author text, should I? And also, in some threads the pics are actually submitted directly by the OPs. Have done that myself AND read the comments.
Load More Replies...So.much better than all the fake AITA stuff..if I wanted to read Reddit, I'd go to Reddit
We need more of these, fewer AITAH stories (only the really good ones), and zero celebrity/TikTok updates
I often wonder if anyone even reads the text by the b.p. "authors" or if everyone ignores it and just reads the memes. I also often wonder how low one's iq has to be in order to think that their comments are seen by the people whose memes are curated for these "articles"
I never read the author text, should I? And also, in some threads the pics are actually submitted directly by the OPs. Have done that myself AND read the comments.
Load More Replies...So.much better than all the fake AITA stuff..if I wanted to read Reddit, I'd go to Reddit
