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.
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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.
Playgrounds I played on daily as a kid would be considered child abuse today.
Same, it's a miracle any of us survived the '80s.
Load More Replies...I unthinkingly went down a slide on a hot Southern California summer day once. It hurt immediately, but I was also wearing shorts that rode up, so my thighs stuck and I didn’t slide all the way down. Then I burned my hands trying to push my way down the last few feet. The good old days!
*shudder* I was cringing the entire time reading this lol, at least you survived!
Load More Replies...I enjoyed our deluxe 80's playground so much. It was amazing and dangerous. We're lucky we didn't die every afternoon. I broke my tale bone on one of those spring animals you rode.
Load More Replies...Metal slides were bad. I remember getting scorched that first time I slid down one that was hot as f**k. That’s when you learn to test the slide part first with your hand. Talking about hazardous playground equipment of the past, anyone remember how easy it was to fall off the monkey bars? Especially since, back in the day, they just set it all up over the concrete and/or hard dirt on the playground. No soft landings there.
Yeah, so many broken bones from the monkey bars. Good times, good times. You think my dumb**s would learn from the first break. Nope m
Load More Replies...Not as bad as the seesaw, when the other would bang down hard and send you flying to outa space
I fell off the seesaw when I was about 7, I had a massive bruise on my hip 🤪
Load More Replies...But we mostly tried to run up the slide but slipped and burned our faces and hands and knees when our faces slammed into the hot metal.
M--- B--- fell off the top and knocked himself out, so ours was taken away. We kids of course thought this was a huge miscarriage of justice...
We had one of these in the school where I went for half of 6th grade.. let me tell you, you haven't slid down one of those til you've slid down one in 110 degree weather.. why someone would put that in an arizona school is beyond me. I got 2nd degree burns on the back of my legs..
But first we waxed them so we could slide really really fast. This way we were still very rare when we landed!
You know those really high ones where you almost get vertigo, but you sit down anyway, only to realize how hot the things is when you reached the first bump and then you can't decide whether you should try and go back or try and stand the heat, but either way, your back is already burned and your feet and palms start smoking.
Still preferred the metal slides over the plastic ones that zapped you to death
I loved those slides so much, I don't know how I didn't die. EDIT: my Kookom had one of those in her backyard my mum and auntie would go on.
My favorite was the curly-Q slide, where you could actually be inside the oven!
And I flipped right off the side of it in 6th grade, broke my left wrist and had a concussion. And the slide wasn't on grass or soft chips. Of course this was 1976 and my parents would never have sued the school district. It was my fault I fell since my friends and I were chasing each other up and down the slide that day.
We saved up the wax paper liners from cereal boxes to slide on. We could break the sound barrier on a hot day.
I remember the playground roundabouts. We would get them spinning as fast as possible. You would hang on as long as possible and kids would get flung off in random directions rolling and sliding across the grass/dirt/gravel/sand/whatever! We were tougher back then! :)
The best was in a wet swimsuit where your little bum stuck, slid, stuck, slid, all the way down teaching your bare thighs what it's like to be bacon.
And rubbed it up and down with wax paper so you could break the sound barrier when you slid down it.
Anyone else have an aunt who wrapped everything in her house in thick vinyl/plastic stuff? The clear protectors for the floor, the chairs, sofa? In the summer, when you had to go visit her, when he was finally time to leave you had to literally pull your sticky sweaty thighs off the plastic c**p?? Just awful. Gives me shivers even all these years later..... oh yeah, she was also the one who had fake fruit in fancy bowls, sitting out to trick you into taking a bit of the shiny apple. She was terrifying.
Also we climbed to the top of that ladder, chickened out and climbed back down if we were lucky enough to have a clear escape route.
some of these baking pans still exist and are STILL FRESH OFF THE 500 DEGREE OVEN!
A little danger made it more fun. You could go really fast on those. Just don't wear shorts, or you'll stick to it.
my girlfriend cut off her little finger on one of those metal slides and kept sliding over and over
I remember the elementary school I went to had those and they were also used in the winter time. Our clothes protected us from the ice cold metal. (Birtle, Manitoba, Canada)
Did we ever the back of my bare legs ( we wore dresses in those days if a girl) and howls of heat pain still ring in my own ears as I would run around for times two.. we were never woozes
Hot metal slides in the summer, certain roundabouts that were REALLY spinny and would fling you off if you didn't hold on and it was spun too fast, forget about wooden chips it was concrete under everything including the swings... How have those of us who grew up with these various dangerous playgrounds managed to survive? 😄
The only way to deal with the devil's runway was to bring a towel with me.
Always wondered what one of those would look like from an airplane. Had to be blinding.
Has anyone ever gotten stuck in the swirly chair? Don't know how else to describe it.
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."
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
