About

Men Discussing Things refers to a two-panel meme format humorously comparing two situations in which men discuss something. Initially circulated on 4chan, the format later spread to other websites, seeing increased use in memes starting in April 2019, particularly with variations comparing the comments sections on various websites.

Origin

Before March 6th, 2012, an anonymous 4chan user posted two-panel meme based on still images of a brawl scene from the 2005 film Green Street Hooligans and a photograph of a February 2011 round table meeting between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Spanish King Juan Carlos and Russian and Spanish business community representatives. The meme humorously compared behaviors of /v/ board users when discussing video games and porn. On March 6th, 2012, Giantbomb user valrog posted the earliest copy of the image currently available online (shown below).^[1]

Spread

In the following years, more versions of the meme appeared on /v/ and other 4chan boards, with posts comparing how users on that boards discussed various subjects.^[2] On December 16th, 2013, Redditor bomberman posted a version of the meme captioned "men discussing sports / men discussing porn" to /r/funny subreddit, gaining over 1,800 upvotes in six months (shown below).^[3]

In the following days, the image was reposted multiple times, including reposts appearing on Tumblr,^[4] Cheezburger,^[5] We Know Memes^[6] and other websites.

In the following years, more versions of the meme were posted online both on 4chan and other websites. For example, on September 2, 2019, Redditor Alceus posted a version of the meme referencing The Fappening ^[7] which gained over 12,400 upvotes (shown below, left).

Starting in April 2019, the format saw a surge in popularity on Reddit and Instagram, used in a similar manner to recent Angry Hulk vs. Civil Hulk format, often ironically. In some examples, the format, along with similar variations, has been used for comparing comments sections on various websites. For example, on April 25th, 2019, Redditor A-Bowl-of-Rice posted a meme comparing comments sections of YouTube and Pornhub which gained over 34,500 upvotes in two months (shown below, left).^[8] On May 9th, 2019, Redditor Hararger posted a version of the meme in /r/freefolk subreddit which gained over 39,000 upvotes in one month (shown below, right).^[9]

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References