This Couldn't Be More Orwellian, Places That Are Harder To Get Into Than The Capitol And This Week's Other Best Memes, Ranked
Here at Digg, we try our best to cover the most important and confounding memes that come across the timeline. But the web is littered with tons of great memes that never quite hit the mainstream and instead just bounce around the weird corners of Twitter or Reddit.
Enter our recurring feature, Memes, Ranked. This week, we've got men will literally do anything instead of going to therapy, Bean Dad, this could not be more Orwellian, places that are harder to get into than the US Capitol and the CIA rebrand.
5. This Could Not Be More Orwellian
The meme
Following the attempted coup at the Capitol on Wednesday, which was incited by the relentless attempts by Trump and Republican members of Congress to find (nonexistent) fraud in the 2020 presidential election, publisher Simon & Schuster canceled its contract with Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) — meaning his book "The Tyranny of Big Tech' won't be coming out.
There's a lot to unpack in his response — let's just skip his understanding of the First Amendment — but what tickled people the most was his use of "Orwellian."
Hawley is among many, many, many indignant individuals and public figures to cite early 20th-century writer George Orwell — implicitly, his dystopian novel "1984," about the consequences of totalitarianism and mass surveillance — to express frustration with what they deem as censorship of their words or work. Once again, there are many examples to cite and a lot to dig into here; Miles Klee at Mel Magazine recently wrote a good rundown of why the reference to Orwell, as used in recent years, is almost never apt. The long and short of it, though, is that the particular people complaining about Orwellian conditions and censorship find themselves able to complain about it openly, sans censorship, and have many other options available to them to publish their work or express their opinions — it's just not the ones they wanted.
Naturally, people pointed out the flaws in Hawley's thinking and added their complaints to the list of things that "could not be more Orwellian."
Examples
4. Bean Dad
The meme
On Sunday, the musician/podcaster/close personal friend of Ken Jennings, John Roderick, tweeted a lengthy story about how he had prevented his 9-year-old daughter from eating until she learned how to use a manual can opener — a kitchen tool she had never used before. The epic 23-tweet thread went mega-viral and drew the wrath of the internet, with Roderick being dubbed "Bean Dad" and most netizens calling him a jerk for his actions toward his kid.
Others began dunking on his tweets with memes, using his own words against him with hilarious photo captions.
Examples
James Crugnale
3. CIA Rebrand
The meme
"New year, new us," said the Central Intelligence Agency, which kicked off the week with a slick digital redesign and a "diversified" homepage. Designer Ryder Ripps, famous for his work with Kanye and Soylent, among other big commercial projects, claimed credit for the update, but later clarified that he had been joking. The visual media is a memer's paradise, as the examples below make clear.
Examples
Adwait Patil
2. Men Will Literally Do Anything Instead Of Going To Therapy
The meme
It's a longstanding issue that men are generally less likely than women to seek out therapy, and this reluctance to go to therapy can, in turn, lead to mental health struggles. Over the past week, a meme began to emerge with Twitter users listing all the things men would rather do in lieu of therapy. While some of the examples take shot at certain public figures, such as Trump and Bean Dad, others have taken inspiration from popular culture and cite movies and shows such as "Seven" and "Twilight: New Moon."
Examples
And this is sobering, but also poignant:
BJ Pang-Chieh Ho
1. Places That Are Harder To Get Into Than The US Capitol
The meme
Yesterday, a MAGA mob stormed the Capitol building in DC while Congress was convening to certify the Electoral College votes. As this was happening, as always, people were coping with watching an attempted coup in real time by tweeting. One popular subject: how on earth did the Trump-supporting crowd get through Capitol security and DC police and make it into the building? To onlookers, it appeared as though the cops themselves let rioters through, though this may or may not have been the case.
Even so, the mob had little trouble getting inside the Capitol, which led to endless tweets bringing up places that are far more difficult to break into than the Capitol seems to be.
Examples
Molly Bradley
And if you're hungry for more memes, here's the most recent "The Week's Best Memes, Ranked" article, where we rank "The Queen's Gambit," one gotta go, package fail, Bernie got inked and stimulus checks.
