The Memes of the Week: August 19th, 2019

From the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the fast-food universe, the culture got meme'd hard this week. We saw Sony play the proverbial Thanos and snap Spidey out of the MCU, Quentin Tarantino expressing our collective loss in his aimless wandering around and, most importantly, we drowned our sorrows in fried chicken sandwiches. Pop culture collided into memedom, but we're still left with one question: Is Fortnite actually overrated?

Spider-Man Leaves the MCU

As gamers, memers and fans congratulated PewdiePie on his marriage, everyone else's "spidey sense" began tingling. They were right to be concerned because Sony and Disney announced a split that would leave Marvel's signature character, Spider-Man, out of future MCU films. Memers took it harder than most--apparently, forgetting that the two best Spidey films, Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse were produced without Marvel's involvement--pouring their hearts into memes that defended one of the largest corporations. One person who didn't feel sorry for Disney was Stan Lee's daughter, who told TMZ this week: "No one could have treated my father worse than Marvel and Disney's executives." At least, we likely won't hear the words "Peter Tingle" again.

Popeye's and Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich Feud

Speaking of corporate stanning, everyone who wasn't feeling sorry for Disney was fawning over Popeye's. Not the beloved sailor man, the fast-food restaurant. The internet exploded with reviews of Popeye's new chicken sandwich, and when the social media accounts of Popeye's, Chick-fil-A and, later, Wendy's got into it, people ate it up faster than, well, fried chicken. Image macros, object labels, GIFs and more littered the internet like it was the parking lot of a Popeye's, praising their favorite fast-food chain for making a better chicken sandwich than the other fast-food chain. That's pretty good news for Popeye's, a lowly upstart franchise that's only worth $1.8 billion.

Is Fortnite Actually Overrated?

In a week rife with Internet users coming to the defense of billion-dollar corporations, it was nice to see someone, anyone, speaking truth to power. Thankfully, a trio of pre-teen gamers was up to the task. After a screenshot of a video conversation on the YouTube channel Junior Studios went viral, the question "Is Fortnite Actually Overrated?" was on the lips of everyone in the know. The shot became a popular image macro with people posting variations of the question, but nothing could come close to the initial inflection point, when Tumblr user georgedesand re-christened the hosts "Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates."

Jon McNaughton's "The Masterpiece" Painting

Much like Disney or Popeye's, Trump is a brand unto itself. The president is the face of his own billion-dollar corporation that includes casinos, buildings, t-shirts, hats and TV shows. So you could consider Jon McNaughton's "The Masterpiece" another example of the corporate fandom that plagued the internet this week. McNaughton, who's made a name for himself by creating overly laudatory paintings of his bizarre perception of our normal president, who this week shouted "I am the chosen one" at the heavens. The artist's work is also an amazing source for meme formats, and "The Masterpiece," which depicts Trump as a painter unveiling his latest work for some reason, is no exception.

Quentin Tarantino Walking Around

The week's obsession with corporate handholding has left us feeling a bit lost. What does it say about the world when we're more concerned about Spider-Man's place in the fake universe than we are about the Amazon rainforests place in the real one. With that in mind, Quentin Tarantino Walking Around became a perfect representation of August 19th, a weird, aimless week in which we looked at a bunch of fancy things but felt nothing.