Isn’t it about time we show a little respect for our boys in blue? And no, I’m not talking about the police.
For the last 24 hours, Reddit has been obsessed with a new meme that pits “half-naked women” against “our boys in blue.” Here’s the most popular post thus far, which doesn’t feature men in uniform but rather a still from the Adult Swim show Rick and Morty.
The meme is a parody of a tired social media trope. If you’ve spent any time on Facebook, you’ve seen countless iterations of it: Someone points out how frustrated they are at seeing so many innocuous posts about Kim Kardashian or some other vacant celebrity flooding their News Feed and suggest it’s time to do something about it. The posts tend to read like a chain email and call on you to show your support by sharing an image of a more noble cause, framing it as a simple act of defiance. Most often it’s an image of the police (usually in a context that suggests a profound misunderstanding of the Black Lives Matter movement), but it’s used to support all sorts of servicemen and women that—to be fair—do get short thrift on social media: firefighters, veterans, registered nurses, etc.
The Reddit version, however, swaps out the celebrities to reveal some sexist frustration with the popularity of “half-naked women” on the social media site and takes a hard left turn into the absurd.
There are dozens of variations on the meme at this point, each one illustrating a different nook of Reddit. There’s one for r/CHICubs, dedicated to the World Series champs; Family Guy; Dark Souls 3; the Detroit Lions; and a very not-safe-for-work version from r/NSFW.
It’s not all satire, though. R/The_Donald, the controversial hub for President-elect Donald Trump‘s fierce supporters on Reddit, has been taking part but took the meme at face value.
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This particular post was sobering, to say the least.
But r/The_Donald was quick to correct course: With all this attention on the boys in blue, what about the half-naked women?
Screengrab via Reddit
The battle wages on.
