About

Map of South America refers to the use of an uncolored drawing of South America as a reaction image. The picture spread after a Twitter user evidently meant to post a more traditional reaction image to a joke but instead accidentally inserted a map of South America. This led others to use the picture for surreal shitposts.

Origin

On January 13th, 2019, Twitter user @is_meguca^[1] (real name Laina Farthing)^[3] posted a map of South America with a joke reading:

me: flirts
me: gets flirted with back
me:

The joke, shown below, gained over 50,000 retweets and 132,000 likes. In a followup tweet, the user explained it was not the image they meant to click and "I've got nothing to promote other than the fact that I'm a dumbass."^[2]

Spread

After the tweet spread, others began using the same map of South America as surreal punchlines to jokes. User @GRAVEMINDS posted a joke that gained over 30 retweets and 130 likes (shown below, left). User @houstonoutlaws posted a joke that gained over 20 retweets and 110 likes (shown below, right).

Other jokes include a tweeted clip by @rickanartist of Miles Morales from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse saying "South America," gaining over 2,500 retweets and 15,000 likes (shown below, top) and a Distracted Boyfriend edit tweeted by @dsnywrld422 that gained over 2,300 retweets and 18,000 likes (shown below, bottom).

The meme was covered by Daily Intelligencer,^[3] where editor Ben Williams theorized it grew popular as "first Dada meme. It’s meaninglessness is a satire of meme culture." Daily Intelligencer also interviewed Farthing, who revealed she had meant to post a Surprised Pikachu meme but clicked on the map of South America instead.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References