There are so many whack memes out there that there’s really no way of knowing what’s going to click with the online audience anymore. One minute it’s moth memes, the next it’s a literal egg coming after Kylie Jenner’s Instagram record, and now we’ve got map of South America reacts.
https://twitter.com/is_meguca/status/1084586444117762048?
Allow me to explain.
New York Magazine reported that this tweet from @is_meguca quickly went viral after she posted it on Monday. It follows a familiar, basic meme format:
“me: flirts
me: gets flirted with back
me: (map of South America)”
So yea, it takes an unexpected turn once you get to the image reaction. A map of South America is rather ambiguous as far as indicating a reaction goes, and yet it really resonated with the online audience.
The tweet has nearly 50k retweets and 130k likes and counting. Plus the South America reaction has taken off and found life in new memes across the web.
How did this happen?
i have a college app due tomorrow that I haven’t even started and I’m like pic.twitter.com/QznOEucTRY
— rory (@houstonoutIaws) January 14, 2019
One answer to that question lies in the indescribable nature of certain feelings. Having someone reciprocate flirting really can put you into a stunned state of shock, making you forget which way is up, what is relevant, what to say, who you are etc.
It can be confusing. A bit like the confusion of the map of South America reaction.
— god | she-ra spoilers (@kyleapologist) January 14, 2019
Another answer lies in the post-modern absurdism that meme culture has descended into. It wasn’t so long ago that we became obsessed with the revelation that they did surgery on a grape. Dadaism is well and truly alive.
New York Magazine Editor Ben Williams described this post as just that.
“Its meaninglessness is a satire of meme culture.” he said.
With a meme like this, people either keenly attempt to make some kind of sense of it (I briefly considered its likeness to a bashful elephant, briefly), or they just don’t question it, and find emotional resonance in a map.
Either way, the weirdness gets us interested.
https://twitter.com/GRAVEMlNDS/status/1084684370923798530?
As for how the actual meme happened, the South America reaction was actually completely by accident. That was not the image she meant to click.
https://twitter.com/is_meguca/status/1084586528343539712
https://twitter.com/is_meguca/status/1084622908041904130
The accidental meme connoisseur Laina Farthing confirmed to New York Mag via Twitter DM,
“I had meant to put an entirely different image, one that actually made sense, but I clicked the wrong one and because I don’t proofread my tweets I just posted it as it was.”
Apparently she actually meant to use the popular Surprised Pikachu react image, which might have looked something like this:
But to be honest, the South America map works better.
— BCO'Dowd (@BCODowd) January 14, 2019
It’s just like Bob Ross would say, “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” Continental map reacts only.