Due to its addictive nature as well as being a content aggregator, Reddit is naturally highly susceptible to Memetic Mutation.
Note that the threads that originated many of these, and more, are archived on /r/MuseumOfReddit
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For memes related to r/BatmanArkham, Go here.
References to famous comments and threads:
- Broken arms Explanation (Warning: NSFW)A reference to an AMA of a man who as a teenager lost the use of his arms (contrary to what the meme says, he did not break them) and was frustrated because he couldn't masturbate. His mom "helped" him, and they eventually had sex. In general, this meme is bound to crop up on threads discussing broken arms, parental incest, and incidents or news articles that feature them.
- Poop Knife ExplanationA person whose family used knives if they weren’t able to flush the toilet after using it went to their friend's house and used the bathroom, and asked for his poop knife. He had no idea what he was talking about.
- "You like that, you fucking retard?" ExplanationIn response to an /r/AskReddit post about the worst things people have said during sex, one poster claimed his friend said this.
- The cumbox Explanation (Warning: NSFW)A poster on r/AskReddit revealed that every time he masturbated, he ejaculated into a shoebox. It smelled "atrocious", and he desperately tried to get rid of it by burning it. However, the box was so damp from his semen that it just sizzled and made the smell much worse. Even worse, an update to the post revealed that, due to the poster moving to a damper apartment, there was now mold growing on it. Oh, and the poster added pictures of it, too.
- Jolly Ranchers Explanation (Warning: NSFW)Another poster on r/AskReddit knew someone with a long-distance girlfriend who flew to visit him in college. The person being referenced apparently decided to perform cunnilingus on his girlfriend like he had many times before, but she smelled awful and tasted worse this time, so he popped a Jolly Rancher in his mouth to try and cover up the taste. He deposited the candy in her by accident and quickly retrieved it before biting into it, only to immediately vomit after it exploded in his mouth. Turns out that it was actually a gonorrhea nodule the size of a Jolly Rancher, as she had cheated on him months prior, and now the poor boyfriend had an unfaithful girlfriend, a mouth full of infected pus, and gonorrhea of the mouth plus any number of other things.
- Doritos Explanation (Warning: NSFW)Yet another poster on r/AskReddit had a family friend who worked at a convalescent home that housed people with mental disabilities. In particular, a morbidly obese female patient had a specific mental disorder that made her think literally everything was food. One day, another patient told the worker that the woman had stolen his Doritos, so they went to her room to retrieve the chips. They found the lady there, lying on her bed naked, dipping the chips into an almost gelatinous discharge from her vagina, and then eating them while smiling as the discharge dripped down her chin.
- Swamps of Dagobah Explanation (Warning: NSFW)Yet another poster on r/AskReddit worked as a nurse and recounted the tale of the time that a morbidly obese patient came in with a perirectal abscess that needed to be lanced (likely due to extensive intravenous drug usage). The abscess was far larger than any of them knew (having tunneled into the patient's abdomen), and one incision literally flooded the room with untold amounts of pus, feces, blood, and rotten tissue that splattered all over the staff. The entire section of the hospital reeked from the stench, and the entire suite was quarantined for several days just to get the smell out after it had been cleaned. The incident made the grizzled ex-Army surgeon utter the only complaint that OP had ever heard from them: "That was bad." The name is a reference to the swamp planet Yoda lives on in The Empire Strikes Back.
- Coconuts Explanation (Warning: NSFW)A poster on r/TodayIFuckedUp recalled how they masturbated with a coconut for a week until they discovered during one of their "sessions" that it was filled with maggots, since they never bothered to dispose of the coconut. This led to a bunch of people who didn't learn anything from this story to try this themselves, which went about as well as you'd expect — mostly Groin Attacks.
- Cylinder ExplanationA poster of r/AskReddit asked for advice on how to remove a "Cylinder" inserted in a mini M&M tube without damaging said cylinder inside. The details he gave made it extremely obvious that the "cylinder" was his penis, but he was very insistent on referring to it only as "a cylinder". It ended up with him taking a trip to the hospital.
- DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS ExplanationA poster on r/legaladvice was accused of drunkenly sexually harassing a woman while at a hotel for a work event in a way that was so Egregious that the hotel threw his entire company out and made them Persona Non Grata. The poster could see the writing on the wall, but wanted to know if there was even a shred of a chance that they could potentially walk away from this with their job still there, and the poster's emphasis of how they were a Director of Operations (in all-caps) making $125,000/yr (which, as many commenters pointed out, was well below market average for that position, indicating that they either worked for a very small company or were in an isolated geographic area) and enormous sense of entitlement and total lack of any sense of responsibility earned the unanimous ire of the commenters. In a follow-up post, they revealed that they were fired after the hotel had presented surveillance footage to the company, and were going to lie to their wife about the circumstances of their departure. Some time later, a poster who appeared to be their wife showed up in r/relationships asking how to handle the impending divorce with their son, and in the comments, she detailed exactly what they picked up on surveillance: her husband had cornered the woman in a swimming pool while very obviously masturbating through his swimsuit.
- Sticky notes ExplanationFrom a post where the OP claimed his landlord was stalking him and leaving mysterious post-it notes in his surroundings. In an incredible luck break, another Redditor correctly guessed the OP had dangerous levels of CO poisoning. Nowadays, anytime carbon monoxide comes up in a thread, there's a comment about sticky notes not far behind.
- Along the same lines, suggesting that someone get a CO detector in any situation remotely resembling the original sticky note guy's.
- Kevin. ExplanationComes from this user's story about the dumbest student he ever taught. Kevin couldn't tell the difference between dogs and cats and once tazed himself in the neck (and the taser wasn't found on or anywhere near him when the ambulance arrived), among other things. His parents were equally as incompetent.
- "We did it, Reddit!" ExplanationIt's a phrase that makes fun of Reddit taking credit for something that it was not responsible for. Or alternatively, it's also used as a sarcastic celebration for achieving something of no importance in a comment chain. More recent instances of the phrase are also a reference to the Reddit Boston bomber fiasco.
- Geraffes are dumb./Stupid long horses./[ascii art of a giraffe with a disapproving look]ExplanationSomeone called giraffes dumb as a response to a picture of a giraffe licking a painting, and in accordance to Murphy's Law, spelled it "geraffe", then made a series of increasingly funny/bizarre edits complaining about downvotes.
- "It went okay." ExplanationFrom a post where the poster claimed that his female roommate would masturbate daily and that he planned to walk in on her. When he finally did, "it went okay."
- COLBY 20xx! ExplanationA reference to a four-thread story made by a father whose son molested a dog named Colby with a hairbrush. Replace "20xx" with the current year.
- "Banana for scale".ExplanationA running gag/tradition on Reddit — as well as Imgur, its sister site — started by a well-known post where the poster used a banana he was eating as a makeshift scale. Now Redditors and Imgurians posting pictures of objects/animals are often expected to use a banana as a size measurement tool to give other users an idea of how big or small the object/animal is.
- Albit Einstein/wicked smaht ExplanationFrom a story in which a Spanish user was explaining the difference between the verbs for "to know completely" and "to be familiar with." For example, you could be familiar with Boston, but not know it completely, to which one student responded "Albit Einstein could! He's wicked smaht!"
- "In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence." ExplanationAn infamous comment from /r/atheism, from a teenager who thought he was being smart. This immediately exploded and mutated into "euphoria" being short-hand for neckbeardism, especially militant antitheism. (Bear in mind that Reddit generally approves of militant atheism, but the euphoria remark went too far and sounded too overbearingly self-righteous even for a community that generally accepts Belief Makes You Stupid as an objective fact.)
- Everybody hates Erin. ExplanationOriginates from a comment in which a girl diagnosed with cancer had a friend named Erin turn on her and tell everyone at her school the girl was faking it for attention.
- TIL Steve Buscemi served as a firefighter during 9/11.ExplanationA ridiculously overused post on the "Today I Learned" subreddit, being used to poke fun at Redditors in general who learned something that's already common knowledge.
- Fuck Jenny. ExplanationComes from a /r/relationships post where the OP discovers that his wife has been cheating on him. It has since mutated as the epitome of a Jerkass cheating wife.
- And Timmy fucking died. Explanation"Timmy" is a recurring character in poems by u/Poem_for_your_sprog, and whenever he appears, the last line of the poem is always "...and Timmy fucking died".
- SIR I ALREADY TOLD YOU I AM NOT A COMPUTER PERSON, YOU ARE REFUSING TO HELP ME SO I AM GOING TO HANG UPExplanationA line spoken to a tech support guy over the phone when dealing with a difficult customer who didn't even know what error messages or even browsers were. Now gets repeated in any thread with somewhat technical details, with "computer" replaced by whatever field is appropriate.
- Along with this, the surprising amount of computer-illiterate people that print an email, scan it, and email the scanned image instead of just forwarding it (resulting in massive image quality loss) is occasionally lampshaded.
- We got bamboozled! ExplanationA Redditor made a self-post in /r/me_irl stating that if their post got 10,000 upvotes within two days, they would get a tattoo of the day's #1 post on their ass. They then posted a reminder of this promise the next day. After it was over, with the required score comfortably reached, they made another post proudly proclaiming that they had no intention of getting the tattoo and that Reddit had been bamboozled. This resulted in the word "bamboozle" becoming the Egregious of Reddit for a while.
- NEXT!! ExplanationThis meme references an /r/insanepeoplefacebook post in which a woman looking to transport 20 people from the airport to church dismissed all available offers for trivial reasons and exclaimed “NEXT!!” after each refusal.
- PancakesExplanationUsed on r/HFY(Humanity, Fuck Yeah!) as slang for "romantic liaisons" between a human and a xeno, usually referring to stories that are NSFW. Comes from the very first NSFW original story ever posted on the subreddit, which was called Pancakes
- Pride and accomplishment Explanation The most downvoted comment in Reddit history was when Electronic Arts used these words to justify the lootboxes in Star Wars Battlefront II (2017).
- "Explain it, Peter" ExplanationOne post from /r/okbuddyretard ironically had Peter Griffin explain a not-so-subtle jab at Barack Obama. This lead the creation of /r/explainitpeter and multiple posts and comments about Peter explaining a (typically bad) joke, usually with a Wall of Text.
- He boomed meExplanationA tweet that described Boston Celtics player Jayson Tatum dunking on LeBron James in a crucial elimination game and the latter expressing his admiration for the former quickly caught on like wildfire on /r/nba and spread to the rest of the website in a very short time.
- The Iranian yogurt is not the issue here. explanationFrom a thread on r/AmItheAsshole in which a woman threw out her boyfriend's massive collection of yogurt (much of which had gone rancid, because it's yogurt). She mentioned that when she brought up the concern that the Iranian yogurt might have been in violation of trade sanctions, he retorted that "the Iranian yogurt is not the issue here". As the thread was eager to point out, this was definitely a true statement (if not in at all the way he had meant it), and it quickly became a byword for when people post about a highly-dysfunctional relationship but only focus on one small issue.
- Hi, Herbert! Explanation A post to r/Catswhoyell showing a small white kitten being greeted by his owner and letting out a long mew. This video quickly became exploitable, with video makers replacing Herbert's meow with other noises. The owner later went on to post other videos of Herbert as a growing cat, including two follow-ups in the style of the original.
- INFO: what the fuck? ExplanationFirst-level comments on r/AmItheAsshole must start with a code sorting them into one of five categories — four possible judgements, or "INFO" to request further information. One thread with a particularly thoughtless OP got a commenter simply asking what in the world was wrong with him.
- I also choose this guy's dead wife. ExplanationA thread asking users what person from history they would have sex with received a heartfelt answer from a widower about how much he missed his late wife. And then came this reply, which has been quoted and snowcloned countless times.
Everything else:
- Kill It with Fire as a typical reaction to centipedes, arachnids, and the like.
- "No, that's [blank]. You're talking about [phrase].": These are long-running threads about a poster mistaking something for something that sounds similar (the [blank]). The [phrase] will be a description of something else that sounds similar, which the next poster will similarly debunk. Example.
- SO BRAVE:ExplantionSaid in response to someone declaring a widely held opinion, such as "Creationists are stupid". As of late, also applies to stereotypical Reddit views, such as militant atheism, in the same vein as 'euphoria'.
- "My autistic army veteran gay cat brother drew this on his deathbed" and variations. ExplanationMaking fun of people's tendency to include a sob story for a picture in the title, fishing for upvotes.
- "Would you rather fight one horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses?" A traditional AMA question.
- "You have been banned from /r/pyongyang"ExplanationRefers to an incident where posters of /r/MURICA! invaded and vandalized the /r/pyongyang subreddit with American silliness. /r/pyongyang completely shut itself off from public viewing and banned everyone involved. Now anytime a negative statement about North Korea is made on the site, someone will respond with this.
- Alternatively: "You are now a moderator of /r/pyongyang" for positive statements about North Korea.
- /r/pingpong has been getting involved due to the similar names. The general formula is that if you're 'banned' from /r/pyongyang, you become a moderator of /r/pingpong and vice versa.
- Ah, the ol' Reddit switcharoo. ExplanationSomewhat complex. When someone makes a joke that plays off the original poster’s ambiguous description by deliberately highlighting the least relevant of two or more subjects depicted in the image or video, which is in itself a meme, someone else is obligated to make a comment "Ah, the ol' Reddit switcharoo" that links to the last "switcharoo" comment they've seen, resulting in a chain of links that at the moment sprawls thousands of comments.
- Hold my ___, I'm going in!
- Hello future people!ExplanationThere's a lot of people who go back through the roos. And yes, someone called u/Future_People is replying 'Hello!'.
- Watch out for the ___!
- IM ALREADY IN TOO DEEP DAMN IT. I HAVE NO CHOICE HERE WE GOOOOOOOOO Explanationu/Allmightyexodia posts this when going through some switcharoos. He has several followers -# some persisted, whilst others were lost to the rabbit hole.
- Reddit Enhancement SuiteReddit Enhancement SuiteReddit Enhancement SuiteReddit Enhancement SuiteReddit Enhancement SuiteReddit Enhancement SuiteReddit Enhancement SuiteExplanationA popular browser extension has a shortcut inserting its name and link to the official website into a comment, which is prone to abuse, to the point where the extension itself now tells you off if you try to use it too many times in one post.
- The condoms are under the sink/You could have heard a needle drop/And then everyone clapped/$100%/His name? Albert Einstein/Can confirm, I was the _____/r/thathappened/etc Explanation/r/ThatHappened is dedicated to making fun of obviously made up stories on Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, and so on. Some select phrases from the most popular stories of that nature, or the subreddit's name, are used to imply that a story on another subreddit is made up.
- Cat.Explanationr/CatsStandingUp has very specific posting rules: any text post on the subreddit must be "Cat." No deviations of any kind are allowed, and anyone who does is banned. The rest of Reddit picked up the joke and you can probably find strings of "Cat." comments on any thread related to cats.
- "You have now been banned from /r/planetside. To get unbanned you must write a 500 word essay on how transphobia affecting [blank]."ExplanationA mod banned a user for transphobic comments on the Planetside subreddit, though most people believed it was his usage of the word 'trap' (slang term for MTF pre-ops or girly-looking boys). The user in question was ordered to write an essay on transphobia.
- Test [something] Please Ignore Explanation This is a running gag that has become the theme for games, mods, teams, guilds, and so on by Redditors. It was based on a test post that had somehow become extremely popular.
- Reached its logical conclusion when the official Reddit EVE Online alliance was named TEST Alliance Please Ignore.
- "Bae caught me ________ ." ExplanationUsed to jokingly mock someone who claims that somebody else did something that they clearly did; bonus points if they claim that it was their significant other, in an effort to make their relationship look cuter than it actually is. It's a reference to this◊ famous post on /r/funny, mocking a woman who tries to pretend that her boyfriend took a picture of her as she was falling asleep — even though her hand can be clearly seen holding a camera in the mirror behind her.
- "Sexy ladies of Reddit, what's the sexiest sex you ever sexed?" ExplanationThis is used to satirize r/AskReddit's oversaturation of juvenile sex questions.
- Obligatory SR-71 Story. ExplanationWhenever the SR-71 Blackbird comes in conversation, no matter what the context, a humorous story about an SR-71 crew one-upping a cocky Navy pilot with their far superior speed will be posted.
- "But what about the $500 million that Trump donated to NAMBLA?" ExplanationA running joke in /r/politics satirizing Republican candidate Donald Trump's unprecedented refusal to release his tax returns. It's a Many Questions Fallacy akin to "When did you stop beating your wife?" — since we can't see his tax returns, how do we know that he didn't give millions to a pedophilic organization? The meme transcended Reddit and ended up on numerous news sites, even making to Snopes.
- "Hey it's Nikki Blonsky from Hairspray". ExplanationIn both /r/SadCringe and /r/CringeAnarchy, posts about Nikki Blonsky's Twitter posts of her telling celebs she was in the 2007 Hairspray movie has gone a bit memetic, to the point that one user asks someone in the board to make her the face of the former's sub already because of this.
- Hatred for Kanye West — usually directed at his ego, behavior, and/or music — was popular on frontpage subreddits, usually accompanied with South Park's "fishsticks" joke (wherein a delusional, angry Kanye believes a "fishsticks/fishdicks" joke that became popular in-universe means he is a gay fish, because everything is about him). Enough angry music fans (mainly from /r/hiphopheads and /r/lewronggeneration, the latter dedicated to combating "music [x] decades ago was SO much better than today's music" posts) started counter-hate posts mocking the "fishsticks" joke and asking if that person's taste in music includes "someone who's innovated and reinvented rap". Metaposts mocking both circlejerks pop up with gusto, as a result.
- Talking about The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise.ExplanationAlso known simply as "Prequel Memes", users parody the dialogue of the Star Wars prequel trilogy by quoting it wherever and whenever possible, sometimes with slight modifications to fit the topic at hand. The scene being parodied is usually Palpatine's telling the story of Darth Plagueis, which is so ingrained, that in situations that show a person or thing able to save others but not themselves, comments will often simply state "Ironic." and leave out the rest. Other lines include Anakin's "I don't like sand" speech, "Now THIS is podracing", "A fine addition to my collection", and "I'll try spinning; that's a good trick!"
- Hi Karin! ExplanationWhenever talks of the Church of Scientology crop up, expect someone to post this since Leah Remini of The King of Queens fame outed a member named Karin who'd always read anything on Reddit related to said church.
- Do not be distracted by the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell in a Cell, and plummeted 16ft through an announcer's table. ExplanationA popular form a Bait-and-Switch Comment, a person will comment about something they remember, but will abruptly end like that time when in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16ft through an announcer's table.
- Me too thanks. ExplanationA variant of classic useless "I agree" type posts that have existed since shortly after the creation of the internet. It started in /r/meirl in 2015 and eventually spread through the site, either to jokingly join in on karma trains or as a stock reply when the topic of useless comments comes up.
- Risky click of the day. ExplanationIf there's a conversation that alludes to Not Safe for Work elements, and a reply is made providing an external link without elaboration on where it's linking to, chances are someone will reply with this. These links are usually safe. If you're really unsure, however, you can ask /u/Clicksonlinks to click it for you.
- WaterGuy12 ExplanationOn July 30th, 2017, a user named Waterguy12 posted on me_irl and said that his internet would go out until August 14th, requesting that people tag him in every good meme they see. This became incredibly popular, and people tagged him in almost every post on the subreddit (some even tagged him on posts in /r/EnoughInternet and /r/NoMorals), resulting in him getting over 60,000 tags when he returned. This also spawned multiple imitations (Like Fireguy12 as a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis), and even his own subreddit. Even as he returned, people still tag him in posts as of his writing.
- "If this post gets x upvotes I'll post it again with double the y." ExplanationStarted off with someone doing this with frogs, where he doubled the number of frog pictures every time he got enough upvotes, racking him so much karma that he got shadowbanned from me_irl.
- "Are you that guy from the Warlizard Gaming Forum?" ಠ_ಠ ExplanationA user by the name of Warlizard will often get asked this question for no reason whenever he posts, which he always responds to with the ಠ_ಠ emoji. Apparently started as another user trolling Warlizard by constantly asking about the (fictitious) Warlizard Gaming Forum, but he found it funny and now plays along with it.
- Turn that frown upside down... now listen here you little shit. ExplanationA common exchange after someone posts a "frown" emoticon :( is for someone else to say "Turn that frown upside-down!" The first will respond with ): and the second will say "Now listen here, you little shit...".
- Fuck You, Karen/Karen is the worstExplanationFrom a user known as Fuck_You_Karen (now Fuck_You_Karen_ due to their account being hacked by Karen), whose posts almost always relate to how terrible his ex-girlfriend Karen is. Became so popular that Karen is now shorthand for a hypothetical woman who believes they hold privileges, to the point that there is now a subreddit called r/FuckYouKaren, and many users don't actually know where the name came from
- And then my dad beat me with jumper cables. ExplanationUser u/rogersimon10's anecdotes always result in his dad beating him with jumper cables.
- General Reposti! ExplanationA play on General Grievous's line in Revenge of the Sith, this phrase was used to call out unmarked reposts first on /r/prequelmemes but has spread to pretty much every fansub and then some.
- Sweet Home Alabama / Roll Tide ExplanationAny incest joke, or something with an Incest Subtext, given the Deep South's infamy for this, will earn this. If not a link to r/sweethomealabama.
- Excgarated. ExplanationA misspelling of "exaggerated" which was so uniquely incorrect that others who ran the "word" through Google (while the post was still new) brought up only that post. It got to the point where a subreddit named after the misspelling dedicated to other humorously bad misspellings was formed in its wake.
- "Egg" as slang for a transgender person who doesn't realize they're trans. Explanation"Cracking your egg" has become slang on several subreddits for realizing that you're trans. This has in itself led to the egg_irl subreddit, which is all about memes concerning trans people before they fully realized they were trans.
- "Music was better when John Lennon was beating his wife!" ExplanationA meme from r/RapMoreLikeCrap satirizing people who ghettoize Hip-Hop, it later spread other subs, often being used to also mock users who hate modern-day music
- r/RedditSings ExplanationThe habit of Redditors posting a line from a song in a thread, then other Redditors continuing the song, line by line. Eventually got the eponymous subreddit cataloging such incidents.
- Beetlejuicing explanationA form of Speak of the Devil where a post mentioning something is followed up by a response by a Redditor with a suspiciously appropriate name, and in rare circumstances, by the subject his- or herself. This happens a surprising number of times with, of all people, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- Wholesome 100 Keanu Chungus ExplanationFrequently used as satire to make fun of the oversaturation of certain memes on popular subs, the most frequent targets being "wholesome" posts, Skyrim skill 100 memes, idolizing Keanu Reeves, and Big Chungus.
- fortnite bad minecraft good ExplanationSimilar to the above meme, used to mock gaming subreddits' bias towards both games.
- Nathan ExplanationA meme from r/hiphopcirclejerk, it's used a name for a parody of certain hip-hop fans who hate "mumble (c)rap", only listen to lyrical (and often white) rappers like Eminem, NF, and Logic, and think black people are scary.
- go white boy go ExplanationA meme from the Fortnite subreddit, featuring a teenager complaining about high school and saying that bullies, chanting "go white boy go", make him do the Fortnite dance.
- r/Woooosh Explanation Used whenever someone doesn't get the joke and/or reference at hand.
- Wholesome awards/Who the fuck gave this a Wholesome award?! ExplanationWhen awards were introduced to Reddit, one of the free ones was the Wholesome award. This being the internet, said award found more use on things that… aren't very wholesome, to say the least.
- The GameStop Stock Surge ExplanationDue to the GameStop (or GME) retailer's falling stock prices as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, various hedge funds along with other companies sought to profit off of it via short selling: the act of "borrowing" a company's stock to sell it, then agreeing to buy it back later, hopefully at a lower price than the profit gained from selling the stock (in other words, betting that the price will continue falling). Members of the /r/WallStreetBets subreddit caught wind of this and collectively decided to screw over the hedge funds and short-sellers by purchasing large numbers of GME stock to drive up its price, forcing them to buy back their borrowed stock at a much higher price than intended. These re-purchases further raised the price of GME stocks, consequently forcing more short sellers to buy back their stocks and raise it even further, resulting in a "short squeeze" that drove up GME's stock price from $17 to a whopping $360 in January 2021, and causing the company to become one of the most traded stocks on Wall Street that month. WSB's shenanigans became a massive source of memes and controversy; many saw it as a hilarious example of the proletariat sticking it up to the bourgeoisie, while others — usually the very hedge funds who were hit with losses courtesy of WSB — criticized it as blatant manipulation of the stock market. The latter, in turn, was criticized and mocked by supporters of the campaign, who point out that they are guilty of using the exact same tactics to line their pockets, and are only crying foul now because they're on the receiving end of them.
- DeepFuckingValue ExplanationA prominent /r/WallStreetBets user and one of the key figures of the subreddit's campaign to mess with hedge funds. Following the short squeeze, DeepFuckingValue became the face of the campaign and was elevated into Memetic Badass status.
- Robinhood ExplanationShortly after GME's stock price spike, Robinhood — a platform that lets users participate in stock trading — responded by restricting trading for GME stocks and other "Reddit stocks" in regards to individual investors, in an attempt to drive down their prices once more... while still allowing hedge funds and Wall Street institutional investors to freely do the same. This move was widely met with backlash from /r/WallStreetBets and the Internet, some of whom noted the sheer irony of a platform named after Robin Hood trying to appease the wealthy elite by keeping commoners from reaping the same rewards as them. The fact that Robinhood previously posted "Let the people trade" on Twitter in 2016 didn't help matters.
- Retards ExplanationA self-deprecating nickname for /r/WallStreetBets users — as many are amateur investors with little to no experience in the field — and a Take That! towards the hedge funds' supposed superiority over the "uneducated peasants"
- Apes ExplanationA nickname adopted after a user made an analogy to the situation using gorillas and bananas◊.
- Diamond hands ExplanationA WSB slang term for when a trader intends to hold on onto their stocks or securities for a long period of time, no matter the cost. Memes of the GME stock surge often depict their hands as being literally made out of diamond as a Visual Pun referring to the term.
- 3725.95 MPH slap ExplanationOn the /r/NoStupidQuestions subreddit, a user named MrWaterplant posted a question reading "If kinetic energy is converted into thermal energy, how hard do I have to slap a chicken to cook it?". Three days later, a user and physics major from Facebook posted an answer to the question where he actually went through the trouble of calculating the velocity needed to cook a frozen chicken by slapping it, concluding that one would have to slap it at a velocity 1665.65 m/s or 3725.95 MPH to achieve such a feat. This quickly transcended Reddit and spread like wildfire across the Internet, both due to the absurdity of the concept and the fact that such a silly-sounding question would receive a surprisingly in-depth response.
- Want to be my venny?
- What the fuck is a venny
- the b ExplanationA user posted a screenshot of a tweet in the r/ThomasThePlankEngine subreddit (a subreddit for memes in dreams or memes about dreams) where the Twitter user saw a trend in their dream where someone asks if anyone wants to be their "venny" (lowercase intended), and when anybody asked what it means, they send a horribly compressed GIF of◊ Springtrap with the caption "The b" to the person who asked then blocked them. It quickly became an actual trend in that subreddit, sometimes without sending the GIF.
- r/place 2022:
- Canadians failing to draw a maple leaf.ExplanationMany people have noticed during the first day that while many countries had finished detailed art of their landmarks or flags and some (most notably Wales) finishing their complex flags, Canada had been struggling to draw the leaf in their flag.
- The country of Bananas ExplanationThe Canada banner above the flag was once turned into "BANANAS", and with it came people changing the flag to have a banana with yellow stripes. It didn't last long, however.
- The flag's maple leaf has adopted the name of Merple Lerf.
- Germany (and by extension Belgium)'s flags were well-known for expanding their flags into new canvases quickly.
- osu! cannot be destroyed Explanationosu! became known as undefeatable after managing to quickly rebuild after numerous attacks, including some conducted by xQc.
- Don't forget the numerous crewmates scattered everywhere around the canvas, often hidden in inconspicuous places or mixed in with shading.
- r/place 2023:
- Fuck Spez.ExplanationMany writings of "fuck spez" ("spez" being Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's Reddit user name) were placed onto the canvas as a protest for the API controversy and the event being launched as a way to distract users from it, and the whole experiment finished with a big white "fuck spez"
- Dog and Demon Lore Explanation The canvas of Elrubius drew hands petting and hugging the dog from the BRFF canvas. This didn't go unnoticed by both parties, who decided to collaborate with each other and draw more drawings on the canvas depicting the duo interacting with each other.
- Bad Apple vs Canada ExplanationThe osu! fandom smoothly recreated the Bad Apple!! video on the canvas and comparisons were made, as Canada continued to struggle to draw a leaf.
- Germany (and by extension France)'s flags were well-known for expanding their flags into new canvases quickly.
- Arkhamposting Explanation The Batman Arkham subreddit has become known as the " Madhouse of Reddit" due to the utterly nonsensical behavior and memes of its members caused by a lack of content. Many of these memes have spread to other subreddits, creating an entire genre of posts.
- Is he stupid?
- I just created a new character, what should I name them?
- What [X] quote should I use?
- JonklerExplanationMost Arkhamposts spell the names of various Batman characters hilariously wrong. Some popular names include "Jonkler" for the Joker, "Bin" for Robin, "Bone" for Bane, and "Killer Cock" for Killer Croc.
- Is there a lore reason why [X]?
- The Lock Award Explanation An ironic term for when a post gets locked from new comments for being controversial.
- Tree lawExplanationA common situation that comes up in legal advice subreddits is that someone wants to cut a branch or tree that is obstructing their view, but the tree is planted on someone else's property. (OPs have cropped up on either side of the situation.) This seems intuitively like a small thing to do, such that even if one gets caught doing it without permission they won't be punished all that severely — but the actual legal ramifications of messing with someone else's tree are harsh, because trees take years to grow. When the situation comes up, there will be people chanting "tree law" as though they're a menacing background crowd for the offender as their doom approaches.
- /r/2sentence2horror ExplanationThis subreddit was made in response to TwoSentenceHorror's... less than consistent level of quality. Posts on there consist of either screenshots of bad TSH posts, two-sentence screenshots from unrelated sources, and parody stories from users. It birthed many an in-joke, many of which managed to spread outside of the subreddit, and even beyond Reddit itself.
- "What is your unpopular opinion?"ExplanationA common way people use to farm karma is to make a thread with this title. It's often widely mocked by those outside of the Reddit, because the top comments are often always the most parroted and most agreed with opinions of the Reddit in question.
- r/4changreentexts
- "Fake and gay" ExplanationUsers of r/4chan and similar subreddits often like to ridicule greentexts where the anon tries and fails to get into a relationship with a woman or any stories involving women by claiming that the story is fake and the anon is secretly homosexual.
- "Be me straight, [homosexual text], am I gay/still straight? ExplanationDue to Youtube and Reddit reposting stories from 4chan, a few of them tend to consist of anons claiming to be straight only for their story to depict anon engaging in homosexual behaviors before asking other anons if they're now gay or claiming they're still straight. Naturally, the amount of poorly disguised gay erotica was enough for several users to start mocking the formula, with one greentext being so poorly written that it was ridiculed on Twitter.
I mean, me too thanks.
