Sleepless nights, annoying bosses, and tiring days, all pale compared to the human ability to find humor in adversary. Comedy has been a coping mechanism for difficult times since time immemorial and now, through the magic of the internet, we can share and create those annoyingly relatable experiences and mock them at the same time.
The “So Basic I Can’t Even” Instagram account gathers a delectable selection of memes that one might find, funny, painful, relatable, or a combination of all three. So get comfortable, prepare to scroll, and be sure to upvote your favorites and comment your own thoughts below.
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One of the comforting things about relatable memes is that it shows us that a lot of human experience is at some level shared. Yeah, maybe it’s fun to be unique, but it’s also good to know that other people can and will be able to relate to your experience just by living on the same earth.
This sort of relatability is actually the basis for most memes in general. The word itself refers to something commonly shared in a group, whether it’s a gene, idea, belief, or preference. Without this understanding, we would not only miss out on memes, we would not be able to share any humor whatsoever.
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It stands to reason that we enjoy content that does relate to our personal experiences. Setting aside memes, comedians, and people who do actually want to make us happy, many salespeople, con artists, and others use this tidbit of our psychology to trick us into trusting them, by using crumbs of shared information to build a rapport. That gives them an “in” to sell us whatever they please.
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This is commonly called the Barnum effect, named after the infamous businessman and showman P.T. Barnum, who would use every psychological trick in the book to attract audiences and get them to pay for his shows. Fortune tellers do the same at a smaller scale, taking little bits of surface-level information and using it to manipulate us into thinking that they know more than they actually do.
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But as these memes and many others demonstrate, people can use commonalities for good, not just sales. Every human’s experience is different, but there are always a few things one can find in common across every known demographic category. Take nature, for example. It looks different all over the world and people tend to have different interests. Some people even find it somewhat intimidating or prefer certain biomes to others.
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But the vast majority of people showed similar, positive emotions when presented with the same natural images, showing that there is something in common, if we strip away all the variables. So remember, when you are looking at this collection of memes that were made by total strangers, that there are humans out there who can just add some humor to their daily experience and make thousands laugh.
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