Surreal Memes

About

Surreal Memes are a sub-genre of Ironic Memes that are artistically bizarre in appearance and whose humor derives from their absurd style. Though the difference between Surreal Memes and Deep Fried Memes and Dank Memes is subtle, certain qualities and characters, such as Layers of Irony, Meme Man, Mr. Orange, and a minimalist style, are frequent markers of a Surreal Meme.

Origin

Before "Surreal Memes" became an umbrella term for the style, several memes and characters had been employed in surreal ways, later becoming staples of genre.

Meme Man

"Meme Man" refers to a poorly made 3D head which functions as the mascot of the Facebook page "Special meme fresh." He was later used in one of the most widely-known examples of a surreal meme, the "Layers of Irony" comic (shown below). The comic was posted October 24th, 2015, to Special Meme Fresh.

On June 15th, the Green de la Bean Facebook page posted a comic featuring Meme Man in which the character is quoted saying Angery after accidentally eating a vegetable (shown below). Following the post, "angery" began becoming a staple of ironic memes.

Mr. Orange

Mr. Orange, also known as Orang Min, is a digital illustration of an anthropomorphic orange. After being used in certain dank meme videos and contexts, the character began appearing in more surreal contexts.

/r/surrealmemes

In 2016, a subreddit^[1] devoted to Surreal Memes was created by user magicsdevil. Though the origin date of the subreddit is unclear, the earliest mention of the subreddit by magicsdevil came on April 6th, when he linked to the subreddit in a post on me_irl. ^[2]

Spread

On January 9th, 2017, Imgur user badaboombap posted a "dump" of surreal memes,^[3] many of which feature Meme Man. Meanwhile, the /r/surrealmemes subreddit remained relatively small over the course of 2016. However, it surged in the beginning of 2017. According to a post by moderator choccy milk,^[4] the subreddit had 3,000 followers on February 7th. As of April 25th, the subreddit has 19,000 followers. The subreddit also maintains a Google Doc^[5] cataloguing examples of surreal memes. This spike in popularity for surreal memes led to an explainer video posted by Aztrosist on April 18th that emphasized the deep "Layers of Irony" concept that surreal memes are based on. That video, shown below, gained nearly 50,000 views in a week.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References