The Memes of the Week: July 22nd, 2019

Another week gone, the lot of us slaves to the endless march of time, feeling its iron hand steer us all towards our inevitable demise. Nevertheless, we fight on, refusing to go gently into that good night, opting instead to rage, rage against the dying of the light. And create memes.

Yes folks, it is time once again to summarize the memes of the week. This week, an Anti-Manspreading Chair caught the ire of mememaking males, Miles Edgeworth appeared in a new template that elevated Clownposting with a more sophisticated tone, nostalgic Minecraft fans attempted to complete CaptainSparklez' Revenge in Discord servers, and an egg became bigger than before.

Manspreading Chair

Last month, University of Brighton student Laila Laurel posted some pictures of men sitting in her custom-made anti-manspreading chair. In essence, it was a chair in which men would have to sit with their legs together. The chair won an award at the New Designers Exhibition in London, meaning Belmond will help fund and facilitate the creation of the chair as a purchasable product.

Memers, however, we not so laudatory of Laurel's chair. Given how divisive the issues of manspreading and gender are in online communities, the chair inevitably attracted a horde of jokes from people upset about its very existence. Some memers claimed it was sexist against men while others felt it simply wasn't a very well-designed chair. It's certainly not a chair anyone regardless of gender will feel much comfort sitting in, so angry memers should feel safe knowing it won't be appearing in local furniture retailers soon.

You Are Not a Clown, You Are the Entire Circus

Over the past several months, pictures of clowns have appeared in the replies to bad tweets with regularity, as people have taken to insulting terrible takes by insinuating the poster is, in fact, a clown. While the trend is pretty funny, on June 25th, Twitter user @javeigh upped the game by tweeting "you are not a clown. you are the entire circus." User Clankity felt the tweet sounded like a bit of dialogue from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney character Miles Edgeworth, and thus a template was born. The template perfectly captures the tone of the ever-condescending Edgeworth and has been paired with various dialogue captions where people are hoisted by their own various petards. If nothing else, the template is an excellent reminder that everyone should play Ace Attorney.

Creeper, Aw Man Discord Game

CaptainSparklez Revenge, a Minecraft Parody Song set to the tune of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love Again," is one of the most popular YouTube videos of all-time, with over 180 million views. Released in 2011, the song hit at the peak of the Minecraft craze, and with the game's recent resurgence in popularity, initial players who have grown up (or are at least old enough to be on Discord), have brought "Revenge" back in a game where they attempt to recite the lyrics line by line without mistakes. The resulting videos have been hilarious, as people have set their various attempts to the song itself, errors and all. There's something hilarious about hearing "Creeper! Awwwww man" over and over again as some jerk inevitably screws it up for the entire server.

The Egg Is Bigger Than Before

Coming in at the wire is a bizarre video from 5-Minute Hacks in which the DIY channel soaks an egg in vinegar and maple syrup for several days to "make it bigger than before." The clip went viral on Twitter after user @chipspopandabar posted it, leading to a series of tweets and parodies akin to the similarly viral They Did Surgery On a Grape meme. At the time of writing, the meme is still in its song lyric and poetry parody phase, which means it's at its peak. Best to get in on the B I G E G G meme now before "the egg is bigger than before" becomes an oversaturated copypasta.