Me IRL

About

Me IRL is a phrase used to indicate that a user believes that a linked image or video indicates their present mental or physical state. The phrase is also often used ironically by using a strange or cringeworthy image. The phrase is normally altered in weird ways for added humor such as meme_irl, or me_url.

Origin

Using the acronym IRL to mean "in real life" originated in the 1990s in early Internet chatrooms and forums. The phrase was often used to distinguish between someone's online persona and their real occupation or existence.

According to The Daily Dot^[4], the "me irl" coinage was originally used by furry writer and artist Jurann Foxtail in 1997. Foxtail's website's "About" page has a description of the artist's "fursona" in which it describes how the character "even looks like me IRL".^[3]

In early 2010, the term "Fite Me IRL, Fgt," also became popular through association with Navy Seal Copypasta and forums like Bodybuilding.com.

Spread

The meme became popular after October 26th, 2012, when a dedicated subreddit was created.^[2] As April 22nd, 2015 the subreddit has over 114,000 subscribers and has spawned three associated subreddits, /r/meowirl^[5], /r/meirlvideo^[6] and /r/metameirl^[7].

/r/me_irl Subreddit Moderator Controversy

The /r/me_irl Subreddit Moderator Controversy was a scandal surrounding the moderators of the subreddit /r/me_irl. In late 2015, redditors began complaining about the ethics of the moderators of the me_irl subreddit, who had gotten flak for permanently banning users that were not politically correct, or using popular reddit terms such as karma whore. On November 19th, 2015, the subreddit /r/bannedfromme_irl ^[8] was created, with users capturing their bans, or their responses to the moderators following their ban. The subreddit gained 5000 subscribers in the first two months, and reached the front page once ^[9] . On January 19th, a user posted a compilation of the screenshots from the /r/bannedfromme_irl subreddit to /r/CringeAnarchy. The post gained around 3300 upvotes and had reached the front page ^[10] .

In March of 2016, the subreddit got removed for witchhunting.

Meme Schedule

On May 28th, 2017, Redditor lubekubes posted a meme schedule for the May 29th through June 1st, 2017 for the /r/me_irl subreddit.^[10] The schedule (shown below) included: Upvote Nothing Day, The Great Seinfeld Day, Literally Just the Color White Day, and Nothing But Pictures of the Top Comment Day. The post received more than 20,000 points (84% upvoted) and 480 comments, as of June 1st.

The first day of the schedule, May 29th, saw no upvotes, as per the instructions. Because of this, the only post that received any points was one that apparently misread the schedule. Redditor AmosTripleSeven^[11] posted a picture of a trash can with an arrow photoshopped on it with the words "Since tomorrow is No updoot day, dump all your spare updoots here me too thanks." Despite the rules, the post received more than 22,300 points (71% upvoted) and 150 comments.

"The Great Seinfeld Day," May 29th, saw a flood of pictures of and references to the television series Seinfeld. Redditor TheMicroWorm^[12] posted one of the most popular images (shown below), was screenshot of the /r/me_irl board in which the thread thumbnails combined to look like the character George Costanza, and then those threads combined to look like George Costanza. The post received more than 5,500 points (94% upvoted).

Throughout the day, more Redditors contributed to the Great Seinfeld Day. Redditor Joshua359^[13] posted a picture of the Seinfeld cast as Nintendo Wii characters. The post (shown below, left) received more than 24,000 points (88% upvoted) and 199 comments. Redditor mintsponge^[14] posted a screencap from Seinfeld in which George Costanza says, "I cannot envision any circumstance in which I'll ever have the opportunity to have sex again. How's it gonna happen? I just don't see how it could occur." The post (shown below, right) received more than 17,200 points (92% upvoted) and 150 comments.

The next day, Literally Just the Color White, featured memes and images that heavily emphasized the color white. The most popular post came from Redditor Brian_Flannigan (shown below).^[15] On May 31st, they posted a Perry Bible Fellowship Quiz Kid comic of two students passing notes, except the note was blank. The post received more than 28,000 points (87% upvoted) and 200 comments.

The final day of the Meme schedule required memes featured the top comment of the initial post. The comment that won was Beep Beep Lettuce, which led to many posts featuring the words. Much like the Seinfeld Day, Redditors used the thumbnails to spell the words out, among other examples of "Beep Beep Lettuce."

Meme Advent Calendar

On December 1st, 2017, Redditor^[16] blide2910 posted an image of 25 It Is Wednesday My Dudes frogs with Santa hats on in the /r/me_irl subreddit. They wrote above the picture, "I am making a me_irl advent calendar. Everyday will be the most upvoted post for that day as of 1 pm pst."

Over the next three weeks, blide2910 posted the image with the most upvotes as of 1pm that day on the advent calendar. On Day Five,^[17][18] the calendar itself was added to the calendar (shown below, left), as the previous day's post received more than 32,000 points (92% upvoted) and 500 comments (shown below, right).

Some of them became received more upvotes than some of the submissions as blide2910 posted 3D renderings of the advent calendar, allowing users to scroll 360 degrees around the calendar, which they posted on December 21st.^[18]

Some of the memes on the calendar became popular to share and meme in their own right. On Day 16, a post by Redditor Noaan that revived Exodia the Forbidden One received 52,000 points (77% upvoted) and 200 comments.^[20] The post (shown below, left) was added to the Advent calendar and soon saw many variations on /r/me_irl. The post was calling for upvotes to make an appearance on the calendar as the the image was captioned "Make this the top post so we can summon Exodia in the calendar." People began posting different variations to create an Exodia variation on the calendar. On For example, on December 22nd, Redditor^[21] MrNineElevenman posted the "Right Leg of the Forbidden One" (shown below, right) and received more than 26,000 points (91% upvoted) and 180 comments in eight hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References