advice animals and rage comics | March Bearblog Carnival
For March's Carnival my friend Suliman is hosting with the topic being about our favorite memes. For my submission I wanted to talk about memes that were popular during the 2010s.
These memes I'll cleanly divide into 2 camps, "Advice Animals" (not all of these are animals, but I'm basing it off the subreddit. Basically anything that followed the top text/bottom text format back then) and Rage Comics.
While maybe not my favorite memes per se. They are ones that hold a special place in my heart as these were what were popular when I was of age to be on the internet, particularly iFunny and Reddit. I also feel like I'd have more to say about them.
Advice Animals
This was my bread and butter for memes when I was younger. These memes were surprisingly popular for a couple of years before we entered the modern age of memes where there was a brand new most popular meme circulating every month. There were several that were circling at the same time that were almost like meme siblings. Here's some examples of the big ones:
Bad Luck Brian
Overly Attached Girlfriend
Good Guy Greg
Scumbag Steve
You get the picture.
I think the one I liked the most at the time was the "Yo Dawg" meme, which mad fun of the rapper Xzibit because of his thing in the show Pimp My Ride where there was this format of "Yo Dawg I heard you like thing, I put an X in your X so you can Y while you Y".
You might find these woefully unfunny, and you're probably right, our humor has seriously changed over the years, but back then this was peak comedy. What I find funny was how they all were given names, Bad Luck Brian, Overly Attached Girlfriend, Good Guy Greg, etc. I feel like that is kinda a lost art where memes now just have vague descriptors. Like if you say "Bad Luck Brian" there's an immediate recognition, but with other memes.
What I find charming about these memes is that they are so simple and hearken back to a simpler time in internet culture where it hadn't quite grown to the levels it has now. Everyone knows about reddit, but if you go up to a newer redditor and ask them "When does the narwhal bacon?" they'd probably look at you like you just asked them if you could gently caress them while they slept.
There's plenty of other examples which you can find here (be warned, many of these have aged POORLY. You'll see what I mean...).
It felt like a big inside joke, I suppose. I kinda miss that age of memes where you almost had to be one with the culture to get it. Now it seems like everything moves at mach-5 and a brand new popular meme ensnares the culture every other week.
Rage Comics
Rage comics can be summed up as "Wojack, but for people who were old enough to see the iPhone launch". This was probably my favorite meme from back in the day, I spent a lot of time making these on my mom's computer in the 2010s.
You had classics like the Troll face, Y U No?, Forever Alone, Rage Guy, Derp/Derpina, Me Gusta, [Blank] ALL THE [BLANK]!, and much... much more.
Rage comics basically took all the characters above and then told little comic stories out of them.
If you ever watched the internet show Dick Figures, there's this one recurring character, Jason/Trollz0r, who's entire shtick is that his face turns into the various rage faces or references rage comics.
Rage comics became the precursor to the modern Wojack meme, which I don't really care for as much. Rage comics were people telling relatable or stupid stories, Wojack memes became a bunch of chuds playing with action figures to try and win internet arguments. "It's over Anakin! I have depicted you as the soyjack!"
Here's a wiki page to get a full rundown.
Anyway, that's kinda it. This was a fun trip down memory lane, and maybe it was for you too. Thanks for reading!
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as of writing this...
I'm working from home and trying to digitize some of my vinyl records. Idk why, but I kinda like the idea of taking my vinyl's on-the-go. "Isn't that what CDs are?" Yes, but there's something psychological for me in recording the actual record itself, like this was MY actual record. This is the sound that the stylus picked up on my record. Just sounds/feels different. It's more unique I guess that way. Like how else am I going to take my One-Step of Hybrid Theory or American Idiot. Idk, just something that feels like I can get a little piece of home with me.