How did 80's Shredder wiping his face with cloth become a meme?
 

https://twitter.com/Captain_Quench/s...382682624?s=20

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...26/194/bd8.jpg

This is from the episode where he's sweating because the temperature is rising. All over twitter I keep seeing this image tweeted everytime people are "reacting" to something as seen above.

How did this image from a show that pre-dated the internet become a meme? Meme culture didn't even exist when this show debuted! How can this be?

Well I mean... lol an image in of itself isn't causal of meme culture. Basically it's been culture online to react to things with images forever. Real memes tend to have something written on them. So if someone reacts with an image that doesn't make it a meme.

Also, if you tend to find the same reactionary images from time to time it's probably because of reciprocating causation. That is to say that someone finds an image that suits their intent, someone else sees it and uses it for the same intent, and meanwhile google pushes the image higher on the hits because it's getting hits.

I wouldn't over complicate it. Generally, unless something is written with the picture then it's just a reactionary use image rather than a meme.

Looks vaguely sexual that's why.

The meme is basically about horniness, it's used to express that you think something is sexually arousing (or in my experience, that's how it's used). The reason this particular image is used... It's funny that he's trying to wipe the sweat from his brow when it's covered in a metal plate, he's basically polishing his helmet instead, clearly he should take it off but the animators were either to lazy or too stupid to do that. Alternatively the raised eyebrows help with the appearence of sexual arousal.

TMNT fans exist, some still watch the series sometimes, someone used that image and it caught on?

What I'm more surprised about by this is finding out that people still go on Twitter. I thought that Tiktok, twitch, and Instagram were the biggest right now.

Twitter is like the most active social media platform now

Twitter is widely accepted as the Id driven cesspool of the internet.

Unless you count youtube, pretty sure twitter is the most active social media platform especially among young people. facebook isn't a thing with the younger generation.

Young people are morons and narcissists, and Twitter is for morons and narcissists, so yeah, the math checks out.

I have never seen this meme anywhere.

I found it the reason Shredder sweating might be a meme is because it resembles this other meme picture:
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/...13/306/2dd.jpg

Also, have a variant.
https://img.fireden.net/co/image/144...6597549189.png

Didn't know this was a thing, but I do live under a rock when it comes to junk like this and I don't hang on social media sites or use them outside of Facebook and since moving back home from Japan, it's rare I bother with that these days because the main people I posted on FB for I can talk to face-to-face.

I hang on discord and YouTube these days. lol

I would like to point out that said image appears to be from one of the better animted episodes. As opposed to the image below from one of the more poorly animated episodes, Turtles of the Jungle.




https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20141220100508

It's just so ironic to me a show that aired and pre-dated the internet could become part of meme culture. Like what if the internet existed in the 80's? Would people be screencapping every scene of the show and making posts of it online with meme and "gotcha" type comments?

It blows my mind due to the generation gap. Us 30 year olds never took "screenshots" of shows we watched to post online...because there was no way to do that back then as the internet didn't exist. It's like going back in time.

The following images predate the internet and are still memes:


You thinking a still image of a pre-internet TV show to be weird is actually itself pretty weird.

80s Saturday morning cartoons are perfect for memes. Just look how much mileage the internet has gotten out if Prince Adam laughing.

I was also thinking of the two Spidermen pointing at each other and He-Man.

The He-Man What's Going On? video is a true gem.

Goddammit, no.
A meme in these cases is anything that catches on and is spread. Image, text, video. Writing text on an image doesn't make it a "real meme". It makes it a macro and even then if it doesn't fit that aforementioned criteria of catching/spreading it's still not a meme. If you take a picture of Krang and write "Hi" on it, it's not a meme. But if others start posting the same thing in contexts frequently, sometimes making variants of it, then it is.

Jesus Christ.