Nowadays, memes have become an essential part of the internet culture. They cover nearly every possible aspect of life, as people use them to express everything from humor, to sadness, and beyond, which is what makes them so relatable; often to the point you might even feel personally attacked.
One place you’re bound to find such memes is the private Facebook group titled ‘I feel personally attacked by this relatable content, damn’. If the expressive title is not clear enough, the description emphasizes that “If you do not ‘feel personally attacked’ by the content you are about to post then it is not relatable content, damn!”, making sure that every post shared in the group will make at least some people go “been there, done that”.
Today, we have gathered some of the group’s best memes for you to browse, so wait no longer and scroll down to see if the situations depicted in them are something you can relate to.
In order to delve deeper into why we enjoy relatable content, Bored Panda got in touch with a former clinical psychologist, Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D, who was kind enough to answer some of our questions. You will find his thoughts in the text below.
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Started back in 2020, the private Facebook group has already amassed over 170k members, sharing memes and other relatable content daily. Considering that roughly 62% of the global population nowadays—a number that grew from 6% in the year 2000—are internet users, there ought to be people who can imagine themselves in, or have actually been in, situations the group’s content covers.
Similarly to liking people who are similar to us, we tend to enjoy content we can relate to as well. Life consultant for personal, professional, and corporate consultations, formally retired from clinical psychology, Dr. Leon Seltzer explained why that is: “If a person can't personally relate to a subject being written or talked about—or if an activity is one they know little about and have never shown any interest in—they'll feel alienated from it. It will leave them disappointed and disengaged. On the contrary, if they relate positively to some topic, if it feels vital or exciting to them, they'll be motivated to get involved in it, to take it on.”
And either crazy run-on sentences with an insane number of commas, the kind that turns into a full paragraph, even though it is all the same thought, or a series of short declarative sentences that you send one sentence per, instead of typing out the full thought and then hitting send. That happens.
Haha, my teacher once wanted me to read out loud what I wrote in an exam. It was a sentence that was 1 1/2 pages long, including a lot of commas. (To everyones surprise, including me, it totally made sense)
Load More Replies...Oh, I found out at age 50 I have ADD and the aha-erlebnisse (surprising realizations, but the German word is better - see, I’m doing it right now) just keep coming and coming
aha-erlebnisse is my new favorite German word, thanks. Also agreed, it was a shocker for me in my twenties too. Like finally getting an explanation for why the rest rest of the work is that “that way” and I’m just… not
Load More Replies...Ok. I thought I was the only one. You have to have the parenthesis otherwise you won't get the origin story of the sentence!
well, the doctor did say I have HD, idk what HD is but i do have 80 of them
martymcmatrix, who read the letter while the children were playing with the crabs would certainly - under other circumstances - have taken the crook by the collar and handed it over to the lansquenets who were standing at his door, but since in the mood of the mind even this step was still capable of an indifferent interpretation and he had fully convinced himself that nothing in the world could save him from the bargain in which he was involved and so he looked the fellow with a sad look in his well known face, asked him where he lived and summoned him in a few hours again to himself where he would open to him - in relation to his master - his decision.
Ahh crud, I never thought of it that way but I'm definitely guilty of excess DLC in my writing.
Do people use characters? I just type and throw in some random....,,,,, here and there
I feel this. (In some vernacular speech 'feeling' something is akin to understanding and experiencing it on the regular) ('on the regular' is another way of suggesting that this is experienced regularly - I chose this particular phrase to appear more friendly and relatable than I am irl [in real life]).
Omfg. I do that every time I write something, cause my adderall levels plunge in the afternoon and I have to find the bottle (I go through this on the regular) and I’m going through a fit……
I definitely think (and type emails) in brackets because that's the way I think. Not for work ones though
Gotta add bonus content cause some folks just don't get it (they need extra info) and misunderstands the message. 😉
Omg I do this. I'm now using BONUS CONTENT to tell them of their gift from me!!! Lmao
Seriously, is that an ADHD thing? (I do it all the time.) (You can check my BP history. (Sometimes I even put parenthesis inside of parenthesis [But sometimes I use brackets because that gets really confusing even for me {as a coder, I'm used to getting practically lost in parentheses}])) #These have a totally different meaning when you're a coder (they mean ignore this part(Help! I'm doing it again))
Yeah that's true (I also like dogs and I got stung by a jelly fish in Hawaii one time)
Sometimes it takes me forever to write emails because of this. I always proofread and then, when I see a bunch of parenthetical thoughts, I go back and reconstruct the email so those parenthetical thoughts are their own paragraph or tacked on to another paragraph where they make sense.
You are kidding me. That's why I have to break up my dang writing.
When it comes to liking similar people, professor of psychology and chair of the psychology department at Albright College, Gwendolyn Seidman, Ph.D., pointed out that it is important to distinguish actually having a lot in common (known as actual similarity) and believing to have a lot in common (perceived similarity).
In an article for Psychology Today, Dr. Seidman suggested that the less information we have about a person, the more actual similarity affects us liking them. For example, learning that a person has similar interests as you do boosts liking them as you have nothing else to base your impression on without having actually met them.
Based on previous research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Gwendolyn Seidman, Ph.D., suggested that there are several reasons similarity increases liking. For instance, meeting people with similar views or virtues makes us more confident about those views or virtues. Moreover, having something in common with others might make us think positively about them, in a way making us feel more positive about ourselves.
As a professional overthinker this meme is so accurate. I feel personally attacked.
Liking those who are similar to us is also related to the self-expansion theory, which states that people benefit from spending time with others by gaining knowledge and experiences. “Even though a dissimilar person would be more likely to actually provide new knowledge and experiences, research has shown that people are more likely to see self-expansion opportunities when interacting with someone who is similar, rather than dissimilar, to them,” Dr. Seidman pointed out.
Dr. Leon Seltzer also emphasized to Bored Panda that people benefit from learning from those around them. “Growing one's interests and developing new skill sets is experienced by most people as rewarding. Biochemically, what's fresh and novel enables them to secrete dopamine, and that's an unconscious incentive to engage in what before was unprecedented for them.”
“To put it simply, we're made that way,” he added. “Despite our capitalistic, competitive, dog-eat-dog culture, most people would (if only secretly) prefer to cooperate rather than compete. Liking to work together and play together are in our DNA. So playing Monopoly or Uno will be more fun and self-affirming than, say, playing Solitaire.”
I saw a mosquito sitting on my arm helping itself while my hands were full, so I ate it. Got my blood back as a bonus!
In addition to gaining knowledge from people around us, we receive an abundance of information from the digital world as well. It might not always be memes, but internet content has arguably enabled us to learn and share more, according to Pew Research Center’s data.
It revealed that in 2014, the vast majority (87%) of internet users in the US agreed that it has improved their ability to learn new things. Back then it was estimated that by 2015, Americans would consume 1.7 trillion hours of traditional and digital media—a projection based on the 5% annual growth in the amount of information and media in people’s lives between the years of 2008 and 2013. “That is an average of 15.5 hours of media per person per day of 30 different kinds of media in video, print, audio, and gaming formats,” the report reads in part.
Considering how much of online content is memes, it is arguably safe to say that we might learn a thing or two from them. Not only learn, but use them to share information as well. Covering ‘The surprising power of internet memes’, BBC pointed out that they are more than puns hidden in a humorous combination of texts and visuals; they can also be tools for self-expression, connection, social influence and even political subversion.
If memes are something you enjoy, Bored Panda has an endless supply of them, covering nearly every topic imaginable. There are memes about work, animals, marriage; there are also wholesome memes, hilarious ones, even mental-health-related memes, so choose wisely and enjoy browsing the colorful world of internet content.
sounds like me right now... just made a second coffee to track down the first one and find out why it isn't working
In Chinese, the standard greeting is not "how are you?", but "did you eat?".
Note: this post originally had 78 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.