A certain kind of uncannily perceptive dating meme is thriving on Twitter and Instagram, and it is a welcome reprieve from feeds inundated with chatter about the Trump administration. The memes I’m referring to generally take the form of a hypothetical, and are a riff on earnest, but overtly misogynistic, questions that circulate with regularity in some corners of social media: You walk into the kitchen and find your girlfriend’s best friend in a suggestive outfit, what do you do? That is, as a man who is unable to see a woman as anything other than a sexual object, what would be your reaction to such a scenario? The memes — or the best iterations, anyway — take the hypothetical to Dadaist realms: “You walk in on your girl and she has remembered that you lactose intolerant and has taken your food requirements into consideration - wyd???” In skewering the logic of the original premise, people have elevated a crude joke to a parody of the original sexism.
guys, you walk into your gf's house and see this in her kitchen. wyd?? pic.twitter.com/dG4ibXpoF3
— co🅱️ seagram (@cobyseagram) May 8, 2017
Social media has transformed the intricacies of human interaction in a number of ways, but few are as apparent as in the realm of dating. Apps like Tinder and Bumble have created new norms for how potential mates communicate, and platforms like Instagram and Twitter can help launch relationships or facilitate budding ones. The memes about dating that have sprouted on these platforms reflect attitudes about relationships that are often kept private. The “wyd” meme, for example, started in reaction to men who apparently find it difficult to not cheat on their girlfriends. The absurdist examples that followed gave voice to people who have to deal with such men. In skewering aggressively heterosexual, traditionally masculine ideals, the “wyd” meme uses humor to present an opposition to sexism. In that way, it’s an ideal use of the internet.
Gentlemen. Your girl been outta town for a week; you walk in the kitchen and see her brother looking like a mf'n SNACK in his romper. Wyd❓❓❓
— 🌸dad🌸 (@connnorrrrrrrrr) May 25, 2017
You walk in and your best friends pet is posed like this, wyd? pic.twitter.com/83KbZdAaM8
— Milly Rock Obama (@meowwcydnee) May 27, 2017
Another popular dating meme has popped up recently on Twitter. Like the “wyd” meme, this one presents a hypothetical, typically in the form of an image or video, with a question implicitly addressed to women, “Y’all consider this a date?” Both memes have origins in the amorphous region of Twitter in which presumably straight men talk about relationships amongst themselves. The “date” one in particular followed the suggestion that women are greedy and ungrateful for wanting to be taken out. There are earnest iterations of the “Y’all consider this a date?” meme, featuring beautiful couples being beautiful together, that are nothing short of inspiring. Yes, this is what a date should look like. But the ones that truly hit are the ones that delve into the absurd, using photos of something like a literal date (the fruit) to turn the inquiry on its head.
y'all consider this a date ? pic.twitter.com/a9Cdo1wENO
— Vibe Control Records (@TheVibeControl) May 28, 2017
ladies....yall consider this a date? pic.twitter.com/Ia9SkaSp0S
— chris (@yunglame) May 30, 2017
Sex and relationship media — shows like Dr. Ruth, and strangely popular books and radio shows by Steve Harvey — have long succeeded thanks to the public’s interest in, and confusion about, matters of the heart. Social media, especially “relationship Twitter” and “relationship Instagram,” follows in that tradition. The same questions and conversations are crowdsourced, and then turned into jokes.While men and their desires have long dominated relationship media, like in magazines such as Cosmopolitan’s relentless coverage of “ways to please your man,” the memes poking fun at glib dudes offer a new, more balanced conversation about relationships.
On Twitter, the president of the United States can derail an entire evening by tweeting a typo, hurling timelines into a frenzy of nonsensical words and nonsensical explanations of those words. Every day is a new sludge of things Trump has said or done. In that context, relationship memes feel especially welcome. Much of the optimism of the internet has evaporated, but seeing the inventive ways that people have found to make fun of sexism offers at least a small glimmer of hope for the future of logging on.
