The Pyramid of Intellect

About

The Pyramid of Intellect refers to an exploitable pyramid chart that showcases hierarchical levels of intelligence. Generally, the bottom tier of the pyramid is labeled "High School Diploma," which leads up various levels of education to "Ph.D." The tip of the pyramid is captioned with a variety of humorous labels. The images bear many similarities to the series Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid Parodies.

Origin

On July 25th, 2018, the Facebook page "All 'ravers' are going straight to hell" posted the first known variant of the edited intellect pyramid.^[1] The pyramid labels the top level of intellect as "people whomst've watched all three zeitgeist movies, read Terrance Mckenna and live in a converted school bus." The post gained 864 likes and 392 shares within the first week.

Spread

On July 30th, 2018, Redditor vicious_viridian posted a variant to the MemeEconomy subreddit that labels the top tier as "people who pee on the side of toilet to avoid making noise."^[2] The post gained 2,800 votes (96% upvoted) in 24 hours (shown below, left). The next day, Redditor Normified posted a variant to the dankmemes subreddit with the the top tier labeled "Niggas who turn off WiFi when they play mobile games to get rid of ads."^[3] The post gained 3,300 votes (97% upvoted) in five hours (shown below, right).

Many Redditors took edits further than just the top tier of the pyramid. For example, Redditor Meme___ created a "Pyramid of Reddit Users" (shown below, left).^[4] Redditor EdgeBeard_NeckLord post a variation of Let's See Who This Really Is revealing which reveals The Pyramid of Intellect meme to be an Expanding Brain meme (shown below, right).^[5]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References