By Carlos Tabunda
Gone are the days where memes are unearthed and traded in old image boards like 4chan and Reddit. Today it’s all over social media where memes are born and killed almost every day. What makes a meme stand out? Honestly we don’t know. Tracing their history might lead to an answer. Why is this important? Knowing more about our memes beyond their face value might unearth some deeper, more meaningful movements that have led to the birth of a certain meme. Or it can be from a cesspool of bigotry. Pepe the Frog is a testament to symbolism in the Internet.
We figure out where are our favorite memes come from:
The floor is ___
Probably the most popular one right now, the first version appeared on Twitter by user @princessofwifi shown below:
The spread however happened with Twitter user @HELL2U posted an edit with the floor being the floor is “writing a coherent story without plot holes” and the person’s face being replaced by the writer of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (that’s a whole new meme.)
After that people have started replacing it with many different people or groups trying to avoid the floor, some version even have people sinking into the floor, in order to say how much a person loves it.
We even have some of our Fil versions c/o our favorite Senator:
The floor is using bible verses in an argument:
Sector is clear
Originating from EA’s Battlefield II trailer. Early a group of Clone Troopers are patrolling a sector, and one of them reports that the “sector is clear.” Suddenly outta nowhere, Darth Maul shows up and the same Clone Trooper yells “NOT CLEAR NOT CLEAR.” After that a ton of jokes appeared on the comment section of the video on YouTube, which in turn led to a ton edits.
The most common format is a 3-panel, the first showing the Clone Trooper declaring that the “sector is clear.” the second being the threat to the Clone Troopers, and the final being the Clone Trooper screaming that sector is, in fact, not clear.
A very rare steak
This is a rare, up and coming meme featuring a picture of a rare steak, edited in text of something the poster considers is very rare. The origin is from March 2017 where the original text was “respect for other people’s opinions.”
It didn’t appear much again until IG user overcooked.doggo posted an edit with a text that read “a quiet black woman,” which while problematic contributed to the spread of the meme to the one we see today.
How to talk to short people
The latest, but not the least addition to the memes of June: How to talk to short people. It was first posted in 2014 on Imgur in its original, don’t bully short people format:
However someone posted a reversed one on December 2016, which was used to mock short people.
The meme however wouldn’t be exploitable in all its weird forms until versions were posted on Reddit:
MY President #RaisedRight
Probably the most wholesome one so far, or the worst depending on your viewpoint is this which began with Twitter user @Mckenna_mg.
The initial response was the usual angry people on the internet, what soon followed has hella more entertaining with people posting pictures of them giving praise to THEIR president, or spirit president, whatever.
Like greatest actress of all time:
or for the real Always Sunny In Philadelphia endgame:
or the one true president we don’t deserve:
and the obligatory Veep joke: