Earlier this year, an unusually positive, sarcasm-lacking meme surfaced on the internet as a means of bringing groups of people and things together with their commonalities by using stock photos of handshakes or people grasping hands. It was sort of like a cutesy version of a Venn diagram, only instead of overlapping circles, each group was represented by a limb or hand.
For instance, this example was used to represent all of the types of people who might be inclined to eat potatoes—whether the reason being that they’re allergic to refined carbs, non-meat eaters, picky eaters, or drunk.
https://twitter.com/bitterpola/status/1030415200225251328
Fast forward to a few months later, and the meme has now evolved (or devolved, depending on how you want to look at it) into people simply using a handshake emoji to connect similar ideas, albeit with a bit snarkier flex. Take, for example, the following tweet that went viral over the weekend comparing Ariana Grande’s newly released breakup single, “thank u, next,” to the song “The Good Side” by YouTube star Troy Sivan.
“Troye Sivan / Ariana Grande 🤝 respecting their exes,” the tweet read:
troye sivan ariana grande
— vic🍒 (@onlyfools) November 5, 2018
🤝
respecting their exes pic.twitter.com/SgbrGQFwYi
And then there were these other tweets riffing off of Grande’s new song:
ariana grande cashiers
— 🥊💥 (@omgitsobi) November 5, 2018
🤝
thank u, next
People People
— A J (@angharadm) November 5, 2018
who love getting over their ex
their bfs bfs
🤝 this song https://t.co/ZKSHXAuqNF
This example compared the explicit lyrics to the Sheck Wes song “Mo Bamba” to the language one uses when stepping on a Lego in bare feet:
https://twitter.com/Herobust/status/1059278095616663552
All in all, it’s a pretty versatile meme, as you can see from a handful of other examples on Twitter, joking about everything from politics to the popular game Fortnite:
https://twitter.com/joelymg/status/1059493816707633152
https://twitter.com/CharCherette/status/1059338206666084352
People that People that
— e10 (@ethanjuice) November 5, 2018
play fortnite hate Fortnite
🤝
Making fun of fortnite
worms alice in chains
— nelly 🔪🦄🕸 (@DIVlNEANGEL) November 5, 2018
🤝
dirt
https://twitter.com/quianasalgado/status/1059304303330963461
This is not the first emoji-related meme that’s gone viral in recent weeks. Last month, a so-called “distance meme” employed the use of three ruler emojis and two red pushpin emojis as a way for people to poke fun of themselves by demonstrating how long it takes them to arrive at a foregone conclusion.
Emojis—is there anything they’re not good for?