By David Futrelle
You may have noticed a strange explosion of highly surreal memes hitting your Twitter home page of late. Blame the Artificial Intelligence-powered meme generator that you can find here, which will happily generate as many weird and baffling memes as you could ever want.
Now, the meme generator is a fairly basic thing, in principle: it takes in hundreds (thousands?) of human-generated memes in a variety of formats before pooping out something it doesn’t understand, but that we humans might.
Given that the AI-meme-generator literally doesn’t know what it’s saying, most of the memes it puts out tend to be a bit puzzling:
And sometimes it doesn’t seem to understand the meme format at all:
But alongside the surreal memes, the AI-meme-generator somehow manages to spit out others that make perfect (or at least only slightly imperfect) sense. I’ve been fiddling around with it for awhile and have been surprised and intrigued by these memes, which seem very much like the memes an actual human might produce on their own.
Indeed, these memes make a lot more sense than many if not most of the Men’s Rights memes I’ve run across (and written about) over the years — despite the fact that the MRA memes were generated by actual human beings who, at least in theory, should know what they’re saying.
Let’s look at examples from both genres — contrasting some of my, er, favorite MRA memes with memes the AI-meme-generator made for me.
Let’s start with this authentic MRA meme:
Apparently the thought process behind this, er, hilarity is: “Women are stupid! And rape is funny! Sharks!”
This AI-generated meme makes a lot more sense:
I mean, who doesn’t enjoy a nice hot dog once in a while?
Here’s an MRA meme taking aim at women in the military:
Contrast that with this cheerful and wholesome AI-generated meme:
Again, the AI hits the nail on the head. Everyone loves to see people talking about their cool stuff.
Here’s a dark and bewildering MRA meme:
I suppose the message here is supposed to be “even if she says she’s not a feminist, she might secretly be one, and falsely accuse you of rape.” But I’m not sure anyone not steeped in MRA-talk could discern that.
Also, why is “radical/white” in ironic quotes?
By contrast, this next AI-generated meme, while admittedly rude and perhaps a bit sexist, is as clear as a (school) bell.
This MRA meme may leave you scratching at your head as you try to puzzle out its strange “logic.”
This AI meme, by contrast, makes so much sense it hurts.
In the world we live in today, who has the patience to wait until you get home to get sloshed?
So why are MRA memes so illogical and incomprehensible? Part of the problem is that reality is not on their side, and so many of their memes only make sense if you’re already living in the imaginary world of the Men’s Rights movement, where black is white and mean, bitchy women rule over all. I know enough about this world from the many years I’ve spent doing this blog that I can usually make some sort of sense of most of their memes, but I still struggle with some of them. It doesn’t help much that many MRAs are bitter bastards choking on their own aggrieved entitlement; their attempts at jokes are undercut by their meanness and their barely developed sense of humor.
The AI may not have a sense of humor, but it’s also unencumbered by all this baggage, so when it pops out with something that’s funny, it’s genuinely funny.
Congratulations, MRA; it’s official now: You’ve failed the Turing test.
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So they’re non-essential, then.
The troll is back! Yay. Something to lighten up finals week. I want to know if my husband is my “looksmatch” when he says I’m more attractive then he is and i do get hit on and asked far more then he does. Probably won’t answer me like all the other trolls. Way to scared when something doesn’t match there reality view. So what do you say boyvoice are you man enough? Lol
@Beyond Ocean:
I don’t know. That meme looks pretty classist to me …
@various:
They’re saying the quiet part out loud again. Or at least Trump is:
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tours-coronavirus-mask-factory-live-and-let-die-soundtrack-2020-5
It’s an extremely stressful end of the semester guys. Our internet router died on us and now my laptop has died on me. I can’t even open any applications without it closing them soon after.
I just came here to appreciate this gem from MansVoice:
Because if you know a person does one thing, it’s for sure they never, ever do anything else. It’s just not allowed.
I don’t even mind that it’s not true (as has already been pointed out). It’s just such a silly thing to fling at someone. Maybe it’s meant to be hyperbolic, but since MansVoice doesn’t like answering questions, we’d never know.
ETA: Also, look at me commenting in the middle of the day! Why do all my clocks claim it’s 9 pm? Turns out I’ve been doing everything at the wrong times for years now.
@Lainy
Sorry to hear that. Is there any other computer you can access?
@Masse_mysteria
It’s also interesting what this implies about Mr. MansVoice himself.
@naglfar
My mother laptop that she uses for work
@Lainy – Sorry, but I’m done talking about Hypergamy here. It’s become clear that this community is not intellectually or emotionally equipped for difficult conversations.
@MansVoice
Unlike you, who went on and on about hypergamy last time even though people also asked for clarifications on other things you wrote? Sure thing, bro.
@MansVoice
One last question about hypergamy, please:
How should looksmatching be regarding for same gender couples? Can I only date girls that are exactly as attractive as I am?
I know that guy doesn’t want to talk hypergamy any more but I want to know this: if women really do only go for the really good-looking men, why is it that women put so much more time, effort, and money into improving their appearance? The rate of women undergoing cosmetic procedures is ever-increasing (even as the internet shows us the sometimes disfiguring effects of bad nose and butt jobs), while the rate of men doing so is decreasing. If hypergamy works the way that guy says it does, why aren’t more men inspired to change how they look?
Difficult like how that “study” you liked turned out to be laughable crapola, or difficult like how you keep using the word hypergamy incorrectly?
@Policy of Madness – I never called it a study, so you’re doing that obnoxious thing where you put words into people’s mouths via fake quotation marks. Rather, the article was merely an interesting bit of interpretive pop science, which does not make it worthless. Nate Silver’s 538 is also not an academic journal, but few people would deny that he produces good work.
@MansVoice
Will you please answer my last question? Enquiring minds need to know.
SCIENCE! Hahahahahahahaha!
In other words, bullshit.
No come on tell me. do I only love him because his nice big cock and muscles or does he only love me for my tiny waste and big boobs? is it my fine round ass that he does complement a lot or my firy red hair. I personally really love his sharp teeth and deep voice. Which one of us married up? or is he my lookmatch? wait I’m a woman. isn’t it impossible for me to find my looks match attractive? Is my sweet techy nerd marine a alpha or a beta? I get turned on both by his ability to do a 100 push up with me sitting on his back and his fast typing speed. Oh well, I guess you, boyvoice, are just to afraid to talk about that.
In all honesty, open your eyes, relationship are a complex thing. My husband is the most beautiful man I’ve ever met, sure he has a lot of physical features I found attractive, I could go on and on about them. But the real stuff that gets me going, the connection I have with him, the real depth of attraction in our relationship has nothing to do with his looks. He could be in an accident and look completely different and I would still wear his ring and hop in the sack with him any day of the week. The small box you put yourself in is what will keep you from finding a connection and happiness with another person. You have shallow beliefs that will only lead to shallow out comes. You look at shallow people with shallow intention because what you think you want is shallow.
When I look at the man I love I see everything I want. I see my future with him. I feel warm and safe and secure. totally open to someone else. He see not just my naked body but my naked soul. Everything I am with no mask or social obligations. I see the same with his. It’s bruised, and battered and sometimes lost, its warm and gentle and loving, it’s patient, compassionate and determined. It’s been broken and taped back together, some parts healing wrong like broken bone that hasn’t been properly set. And it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Your beliefs, they want people to settle. They want people to be shallow and unhappy. That’s where they will lead you. You go down that path, you will never be able to look at someone and know that they are your home. If you want a partner your going to have to love a whole human, with broken parts and a cracked soul. It’s scary, it’s intimating, and it’s vulnerable. And it is the best thing I have ever done.
Actually, that’s precisely what it does.
And to everyone else, I’m sorry, I know I gush about my husband a lot here. I just love him and miss him so much and through all of this has really shown me how much he and I need each other when things get rough. I don’t think I would be coping near as well as I am without him being my rock.
Again, it’s clear that this community is not capable of engaging in substantive conversation.
Actually, that’s precisely what it does.
Obviously, this is a ridiculous statement, but I’d like to pursue the implications a bit. Your contention, then, is that the only valid contributions to any field of inquiry must come through academic journals?
That you would describe that steaming pile of agenda as SCIENCE means you are less of a scientist than my three year old grand nephew. You literally don’t know science from a hole in the ground. You are the opposite of STEM. You wouldn’t know a hypothesis from hyperspace. You make me laugh.
Happy Mother’s Day dorkus.
No, but that blog post you linked in the other thread wasn’t good research, it doesn’t contribute to any field of inquiry (unless you consider misogyny a field of inquiry?) and it didn’t prove what you claimed it proved.
Stop trying to make your failure to support your argument about us being somehow simultaneously intellectual snobs and incapable of “difficult” intellectual conversation.
@MansVoice
And you’ve proven yourself incapable of answering basic questions or responding to criticism.
@Policy of Madness – Well, I don’t know. I don’t really see too much of an agenda in that article – but even if I did, it would not invalidate his findings. After all, all science is conducted by scientists, eg humans, who all have agendas. Certainly academia is full of political biases and such.
Regardless, you have yet to demonstrate that the article does not a) adequate defend its specific conclusion (that Tinder is much harder on men than women), or b) implicitly a piece of evidence for the broader theory of Heartistean Hypergamy.
No boyvoice
You can’t take the fact that reality doesn’t match up with your beliefs so you turn into this. Your hair a shallow sad sack who wants yo think the rest of the world is just as shallow and meaningless as you but it’s not. I love my husband because he’s a whole human being. Not because of his looks or his big cock or how much money he makes. I love who he is as a person and he’s the same with me. It’s not our fault you can’t open your head anymore then what’s in your woman hating cult