Real People in Other Cars
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About
Real People in Other Cars, also known as Korean Traffic Jam and This Is Such a Beautiful Concept, refers a photograph of a car jam in which cars are captioned with imaginary tidbits of information about what is happening in lives of their drivers, humanizing other drivers in the eyes of a person stuck in traffic. Dealing with the concepts of empathy and perceiving others as NPCs, the image went viral in late December 2024, spawning parody memes and edits.
Origin
On December 16th, 2024, Facebook[1] page R E T R O F I L E posted a photograph of a busy four-lane highway leading from Seoul's downtown, captioned "8 billion different tomorrows". In the image, many cars are captioned with imaginary tidbits of information about what is happening in the lives of their drivers and explaining the reasons they are currently on the road, such as "they're rushing to the hospital" or "the are on their way to the airport to start a new life". The post (shown below) received over 336,000 reactions and 146,000 likes in two weeks.
On December 26th, X[2] user @https_sxxxx shared the image on the platform, commenting, "This is such a beautiful concept I'm gonna cry". The post garnered over 43.6 million views, 52,000 reposts and 328,000 likes in four days.
Spread
Starting on December 27th, 2024, users on X / Twitter made parody posts and posted humorous edits of the image that ridiculed it in various ways, often by subverting its message, mocking its emphatical message, and taking jabs at car-oriented infrastructure. For example, on December 27th, X[3] user @brnzageprolapse quoted the image with a satirical comment (shown below), with their post garnering over 18,000 reposts and 238,000 likes in three days.
Later on December 27th, 2024, X[4] user @FateSailor posted an edit referencing the I'm Da King of Da Highway meme which gained over 1,600 reposts and 15,000 likes in three days (shown below).
The image remained a popular source of caption memes and edits on X through late December 2024.
Various Examples
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Top Comments
ArcadeTwo
Dec 30, 2024 at 08:15PM EST
HumbleWaterFilterMerchant
Dec 30, 2024 at 06:15PM EST