Bending Streetlight

Submission 20,503

Part of a series on Object Labeling. [View Related Entries]

About

Bending Streetlight refers to a piece of art by Mojtaba Heidarpanah which shows two gentlemen, one with a book and the other with a phone, sitting on a bench under a streetlight. The beam of light from the streetlight bends unnaturally to only shine on the man with the book. After the artwork spread on Reddit and was mocked for what Redditors saw as trite "phones bad / books good" messaging, it became an object labeling template on meme-based subreddits.

Origin

On May 5th, 2019, artist Mojtaba Heidarpanah tweeted the artwork, stating it was created for a book festival. The tweet gained over 160 retweets and 1,600 likes^[1] (shown below).

Spread

The image was mocked for its ostensibly simple "phones bad / books good" messaging shortly after Heidarpanah tweeted the image. On May 18th, 2019, it was posted to /r/im14andthisisdeep^[2] and on August 18th, it was posted to /r/PhonesAreBad.^[3] It then became an object labeling meme which in many cases completely recontextualized the image to offer a more positive message. On August 23rd, Redditor Musanegra posted such an edit to /r/bonehealingjuice,^[4] gaining over 2,800 points (shown below, left). The same day, Redditor thepurpleskeletonTPS also posted such an edit to /r/bonehurtingjuice,^[5] gaining over 19,000 points.

Other edits used it as a template to make jokes about how the lamp represents an object or group which mistakenly prioritizes things over what it should be focusing on. For example, Redditor Littning posted an example about how microwaves seem to heat up plates instead of food to /r/dankmemes,^[6] gaining over 68,000 points. On /r/OnePunchMan,^[7] Redditor SansPorn posted an example about One Punch Man, gaining over 5,200 points.