parasite

Anyone else feel like their meme standards have taken a nose dive of late? Political fatigue and a general contempt for the world seem to have skewed our taste towards the very dumb. This past weekend we were graced by meme that easily meets this very low criteria. According to Know Your Meme, the trend began on 4chan, after a user shared a still of Paul Allen (Jared Leto) in American Psycho. The intentionally miscaptioned still reads  "Patrick, it's you!! You're the American Psycho?!!," to which another 4chan user replies "He didn't say that." After other users chimed in, the thread grew to over 100 replies. And now it looks like it made an impact in the memeosphere.

Following the 4chan thread, the format started to pop up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Users seemed to be scrambling to create (and share) the incredibly stupid and easy-to-make memes. Even gamers got in on the joke, creating their own versions for releases such as Death Stranding and Final Fantasy. While it's hard to present these memes as the "best" of anything, they're pretty damn entertaining. Here's hoping we see more dumb and easy content in the coming months. This year needs all the help it can get.

It's nearly impossible to avoid mentions of Netflix' Emily In Paris as of late. The series was released on October 2, and pretty much everyone on Twitter has an opinion about the show. The series follows Emily Cooper, an American who's just relocated to Paris for a job with a French marketing company. Emily, who is played by Lily Collins, is pretty, perky, and is also a terrible (and terribly on-point) caricature of the way Americans behave in foreign countries. 

Emily routinely rejects French culture, scoffing at everything from cliche French smoking habits to simply dining out. This pompous attitude has been widely criticized in the media, for good reason. Instead of trying to accept the ways of her new city, she seems to turn her nose up at it, consistently mocking customs that are really pretty benign.

This superior attitude is marvelously called out by a brilliant new Instagram account, @emilyinparasite. The page mixes cringey images of Emily Cooper with stills from Bong Joon-ho's Parasite. The film, a social satire that highlights class discrimination, is a perfect foil for Cooper's character. The photoshopped images make for some truly unhinged commentary. We've included their latest spicy posts, but we implore you to follow for more brilliant content.

Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho made history on Sunday when his film Parasite won both the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Foreign Language film. The film has been hailed as satirical genius - a deft and stunning criticism of capitalism. While the irony of the Parasite winning these accolades in a room of insanely wealthy people is entertaining, the memes have been even more thrilling. The director was photographed making his statues kiss after his big wins, and the image very quickly morphed into the evening's best meme. Here are some of our favorites.

A corny motivational tweet about self care has morphed into an insane Twitter meme rife with film, television, and even fandom references. While some of the jokes can be repetitive (people seem to love riffing on Parasite and Midsommar in particular) the general theme of slowly letting people in on a joke is universally fun. We're also in support of anyone willing to mock internet influencers who think their motivational tweets are remotely deep or revolutionary.