Are meme explainers ruining the joke or saving it? I saw two examples that made me think

I saw a meme the other day about 'distracted boyfriend' and someone explained it as 'man looking at another woman while his girlfriend stares'. Then I saw another explainer for 'woman yelling at cat' that went into corporate greed metaphors. The first one just told me what happened, the second tried to say what it meant. Which approach actually helps you get a meme? I feel like too much explaining kills the humor, but none leaves you lost. Has anyone else noticed this split between literal vs. deep meaning explainers?

3 comments

3 Comments

jana_fox506d ago

Right, so the distracted boyfriend guy gets a literal pass because it's just a visual gag, but that cat explainer sounds like someone read too many tweets before breakfast. I mean, corporate greed in a meme about a screaming cat? That's like trying to find deep meaning in a parking ticket. At some point you gotta ask yourself if the explainer is just bored or actually thinks memes are modern poetry.

grant_allen856d ago

Three people in my office actually tried to decode that screaming cat meme last week and it took twenty minutes before someone realized the cat was just yelling at a cucumber. I'm with you @jana_fox50, some folks really need to touch grass before they start seeing Karl Marx in every cat picture. The distracted boyfriend meme works because it's simple and everyone gets the joke without a thesis statement. But that deep meaning explainer sounds like someone who peaked in their college poetry workshop and never recovered. Sometimes a screaming cat is just a screaming cat, you know?

thomas.parker6d ago

The literal explainers are fine for the people who genuinely don't get it, but the deep meaning ones feel like they're trying too hard. You're right that they can drain the fun out of a joke. That second example sounds exhausting honestly.