Meme dump time!

I used to do these weekly and now I think I barely manage to get them done monthly. There was a time that I, like basically everyone else, was all over traditional social media. I put all aspects of my life up there for the world to see like I am some sort of celebrity. Over time I started to realize that there was really no point to all of this and it was during some elections that friends of mine started to seriously fall out with people that they have known their entire lives just over a dispute that they had no control over. I will admit that I joined the fray briefly and ended up regretting having done so later.

It wasn't that long after the epiphany that I think that social media is detrimental to mental health that I decided to walk away from the big ones like FB and IG forever. I still have accounts at both of those things but I haven't posted anything in over 4 years and I almost never even look at it. After I did a great "purge" of my "friends" and left only the people whose names I immediately recognized, I started to realize that most of my real life friends don't post anything anymore either. I think this is a good thing that people are walking away because honestly, we all spend entirely too much time online as it is.

These days the only social media that I take part in is 9Gag and even then I don't really participate so much as I just observe. 9gag started as a meme site but as you would expect it has gone down the path of political bickering only now you don't really know the people that are commenting because there is no "friend" option on there as far as I can tell.

These days the topics that I am seriously bored of are Biden/Trump, Ukraine/Russia, and Palestine/Israel. Thankfully, you can block certain tags on posts and once you do that it will no longer show them to you and any post that is intentionally tagged improperly gets downvoted to oblivion. I'm quite proud of the community for doing that.

Things haven't been as funny or insightful on there in a while because we are at a very political time but there have been a few gems that I have seen lately that made me laugh or made me think.

Here we go!

It seems that everyone that knows anything about crypto is talking about the meteoric rise as of late and this is good! I don't have much in the way of holdings but I do know a guy who got involved late in 2021 because of FOMO and well, he went through a dark period there for about 3 years. Lately, he is finally getting back to where he started in his holdings and even though his gains are miniscule in comparison to others who were lucky, he is very relieved that things bounced back.

Tweets are frowned upon in the community and many users will downvote on principal. I enjoy seeing them though because I don't use Twitter and never have. I'm certainly not going to join it now.

It's funny because of the way the headline is worded and I think they probably could have chosen a better sentence to introduce their article.

These meme templates can be used for a lot of things but most of the time they are used for innocent "dad jokes" of sorts. I don't know if I just got older but these sorts of things really appeal to me now.

Here is another one that follows the same system. I really wish that I had thought of saying these sorts of things back to people in the past when they said either of the previous 2 things to me but then again, the girl might not have gotten the joke in my situation and that could have resulted in her just walking away.

I have a home t-shirt. It is a Chicago White Sox genuine exercise shirt that I got nearly 30 years ago when I briefly worked there. This shirt is in absolute tatters but I can't bring myself to throw it out and I never will. I will wear that thing even after it ends up like one of Hulk Hogan's tearaway muscle shirts. There is a friend of mine who is in the DUMBO bowling group who only ever wears home shirts. He truly doesn't give a damn what he looks like because he is older, comfortable with his wife and child, and only cuts his hair when the wife demands he do so. We point out the state of his shirts on a regular basis but it is clear that he doesn't care at all. I appreciate this aspect of him. He is comfortable in his own skin and I think this is a great characteristic to have.

Once again this is a Tweet not a meme so it barely made it to the trending page on 9Gag. While I wouldn't say that this is the story of me I do know several people that are like this. There is a mutual friend of ours named Mike that always wants to get a funny story in when there is a group of us around but you can tell that he is seriously struggling with the delivery and by the time he finishes it takes way too long, doesn't make sense, and is no longer funny as he intended. I feel bad for him so every time he manages to make his way through a story and it is even mildly amusing I will erupt into laughter that is mostly faked. You need to encourage your friends to improve not push them down when they are stumbling!

There is a devoted group of pet owners on 9gag and they post some pretty inspirational stuff there. Some of it will bring you to tears with laughter or even heartache if you are missing a pet that passed on.

Now looking into this post a bit I will say that I don't entirely agree with this statement because I know some people that have dogs that are absolute terrors and I disagree with the owner when they think their dog is a little angel. I think this is just because my dog actually is extremely well behaved though and has only ever once chewed up something she wasn't supposed to.

Another popular thing to do on 9gag is to post rather crazy headlines to stories and then make a bit of commentary. What a bizarre way of burning calories. I think I'll give it a shot!

I wouldn't have even known is was International Women's Day had it not been pointed out on 9gag. We don't really celebrate these rather silly holidays in Vietnam and I am happy about that. We can no longer call them "Hallmark Holidays" because does anyone buy greeting cards anymore? One thing you should prepare yourself for if you ever intend to join 9gag is there is a lot of intentional misogyny on there and it is meant for humorous purposes only. I think this is what separates the 9gag crowd from the FB or IG crowd. Not very many people are looking for a chance to berate someone else and make problems and nobody would really care if they did try to do that. It's just a group of people for the most part that like to find the humor in life, and that is why I keep going back there.

I'll leave you with a picture of Nadi, my dog as is tradition. She had just gotten a dreaded haircut just before this picture and while she doesn't care what her hair looks like, since she doesn't shed, they must be done unless I want to have a Bob Marley dog running around my apartment.

Got any memes to share? Let's see 'em if you do!