time travel

Even if you haven't seen 2004's The Butterfly Effect, you're probably aware of the concept in its title. It hails from Edward Lorenz' lauded work with chaos theory. Lorenz first popularized the idea in regards to weather, with the most famous example being that a sudden change in the way a butterfly flaps its wings can cause a tornado weeks later.

In pop culture, however, we associate the butterfly effect with Ashton Kutcher's dumb face and the horrifying consequences of altering the timeline. These memes tend to reflect the latter, and based on their cursed nature, we're, like, 100% sure that time traveling would be a mistake. See for yourself.

Mysterious Twitter user @elpablogrande tweeted 'Enjoying the chungus among us' a decade ago and Twitter is freaking out over the supposed internet time traveler. According to @elpablogrande's profile, they joined Twitter in 2009 and have been 'Riding the Wave of Awesome since 1982!' Okay, very sus indeed! Who is this time-traversing imposter? What do they want? Who do they serve?

Since the tweet resurfaced, many have been expressing their dismay through memes and jokes. Others have their own theories that explain away the 'chungus among us' phenomenon. We've collected some of the best replies, takes and Twitter memes about the puzzling tweet from a decade ago.

The era we're living through seems pretty bleak most of the time. It's hard to ignore the pandemic and our current political shitshow. But the past has been just as bleak, if not more. These dank history memes use humor to lighten up that darkness. As a bonus? They're kind of educational! 

No watch? We'll give you a hand: it's meme-o-clock. Time to laugh at some timeless memes about all things time-related! We can't get enough of these painfully relatable memes about aging, daylight savings time, and of course 2020. This series of clever memes really helped put our worries about the future into perspective. As time slowly crawls toward the end of a cursed year that felt more like a decade, it's good to remember that things can always get worse. If you think about it, the hindsight our future selves will experience is something to look forward to! Until then, have fun wasting some time with these timely memes.  

Remember those Time Machine memes we covered last week? Well, they haven't shown any sign of disappearing from our timeline. The very gender-oriented format plays with many themes, but most often imagines men and women doing very different things with time-traveling technology. While the format often imagines doing something just and noble with the time machines, sometimes the boy (or girl) in question chooses to do something entirely pointless. Either way, we're loving the memes. We've put together some of favorite new iterations, but you can read more about the format (and enjoy more examples) over at Know Your Meme

We know the whole Girls vs. Boys trend in a lot of Reddit memes has gotten a bit tired. But this trending format about how the sexes would approach time machines has breathed some life into the slightly sexist memes. Fortunately, the memes are so good we can't get too mad. We've put a bunch here for your consideration, but as the meme goes deeper into Wojak comic territory, we'll probably start seeing a lot more. And we're happily awaiting them.

One of the latest meme trends to pop up on Reddit has taken the form of a "time traveler conversation," in which a shadowy figure comes from the future and drops some serious future wisdom on an unsuspecting character - generally to very positive reception. The meme has been meshing well with Area 51 memes, as well as old classics like Shrek and Keanu Reeves. Here are some of our favorite examples of the perception-bending formats.

There are definitely some things from recent years that we don't need to be reminded of, but we're here for these nostalgic memes. "We Did It, We Time-Traveled" is a meme inspired by comic artist SrGrafo, which memers have begun using to remind us of things that were once popular on the internet in the recent past. Go check him out on Reddit!

Late last week we were hit with a barrage of memes about Avengers character Captain America (Chris Evans) flexing his time-travelling knowledge on his boo, Peggy Carter. Steve Rogers never looked so smart. We put together a healthy selection of the memes, but they just keep. On. Coming. And they appear to be getting spicier. 

Another day, another dank Avengers: Endgame meme! The r/dankmemes subreddit has been flooded with Captain America (Chris Evans) memes for the past two days, and these particular formats deal heavily with history. In Endgame, chooses to travel through time permanently to spend the rest of his days with Peggy Carter, the love of his life. These memes address the fact that the former Captain America would have a wealth of historical knowledge that Peggy lacks - and can even use it to his advantage. The result is a versatile dank meme that's endlessly entertaining.

And you know what else is endless? The amount of memes we're getting out of Endgame even way after the movie's initial release. An absolute win, some might say.