About

Things Are Getting Pretty Serious is an advice animal image macro series featuring a screen capture of the character Kip from the film Napoleon Dynamite. The captions typically describe trivial social interactions followed by the expression "So I guess you can say things are getting pretty serious," indicating that the level of intimacy in a relationship has been misunderstood.

Origin

The catchphrase comes from a scene in the 2004 cult comedy film Napoleon Dynamite in which Kip is questioned by his uncle Rico about his girlfriend, to which he answers that "things are getting pretty serious" because they chat frequently on the Internet.

On November 29th, 2012, a Quickmeme^[2] page titled "Things are getting pretty serious" was created, with the first submission featuring a screen capture from the Napoleon Dynamite scene accompanied by the caption "She accepted my friend request on Facebook / So I guess you could say things are getting pretty serious" (shown below).^[5]

Spread

On December 10th, 2012, Redditor srw1991 submitted an image macro to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[5] subreddit, which joked that saying "happy birthday" on Facebook indicates interest in a romantic relationship (shown below, left). Within three months, the post received over 7,000 up votes and 60 comments. On February 4th, 2013, 9gag^[7] user female_cat submitted an image macro about flirting on Facebook by liking profile pictures (shown below, right), which gained more than 23,000 up votes and 7,900 Facebook shares in the next two months.

On March 30th, Redditor I_am_secretly_a_cat posted an image macro on the /r/AdviceAnimals^[8] subreddit, which remarked that North Korea's threats against the United States were "getting pretty serious" (shown below, left). Within five days, the post garnered upwards of 11,000 up votes and 80 comments. On April 4th, Redditor harrison6531 submitted a post joking that things were "getting serious" with his dentist after her breast touched him during a checkup (shown below, right). In less than 24 hours, the post accumulated over 9,200 up votes and 190 comments.

Notable Examples

As of early April 2013, the "Things are getting pretty serious" Quickmeme page has gained more than 1,600 submissions.

Search Interest

External References