Surprised Austin Reaves, Jordan Peterson On Joe Rogan's Podcast And This Week's Other Best Memes, Ranked
Here at Digg, we try our best to cover the most important and confounding memes that come across the timeline. But the web is littered with tons of great memes that never quite hit the mainstream and instead just bounce around the weird corners of Twitter or Reddit.
Enter our recurring feature, Memes, Ranked. This week, we've got West Elm Caleb, Aaron Rodgers's playoffs loss, Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan's podcast and Surprised Austin Reaves.
4. West Elm Caleb
The meme
The saga of a 25-year-old serial dater/West Elm furniture designer named Caleb captured the imagination of the internet earlier this month after a woman who was ghosted by him posted a TikTok that went viral.
Women who had gone on previous dates with Caleb discovered that they too had been hoodwinked — including being sent the same corny Spotify playlists and getting the same pickup line about naming a couch after them — and an angry internet mob soon descended upon the young man, who was disparagingly dubbed "West Elm Caleb."
But as is wont to happen on the internet, a minor online dating scandal escalated into a full-on shitshow, with international press attention.
"What started with a John Tucker Must Die moment of women's empowerment — women looking out for each other! — quickly morphed into something sinister and ugly," BuzzFeed's Katie Notopoulos observed.
A plethora of memes came from West Elm Caleb's misfortune, with many taking Caleb's side as he was put through, in Notopolous's words, the "TikTok meat grinder."
Examples
James Crugnale
3. Anti-Vax QB Aaron Rodgers Loses In Playoffs
The meme
Aaron Rodgers has been famous for a long time. He's won a Super Bowl, starred in several prominent TV commercials, and dated both Danica Patrick and Olivia Munn. But within the last year, he's been outspoken about not wanting to be on the Green Bay Packers for much longer (the only team he's ever played for), lied about being immunized for COVID-19, and said he was being silenced while giving a half-hour long interview on ESPN. So a lot of people have been rooting for and against him excessively this year, and in the playoffs as the number one seed, at home, got upset by his hometown team San Francisco 49ers.
Examples
Jared Russo
2. Jordan Peterson On Joe Rogan's Podcast
The meme
This week saw the release of a four-hour conversation between Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson on "The Joe Rogan Experience." There's a lot to say about both of these people — for example, Rogan has expressed some scientifically questionable opinions on COVID-19 to his very large fanbase; meanwhile, Peterson made a name for himself speaking vehemently against adding "gender identity and expression" to Canada's law against discrimination, has advocated for the benefits of enforced monogamy and has said that men and women can't work together without sexual harassment taking place because "we don't know the rules" and makeup is "sexually provocative." OK!
But you don't even need to know or care about any of that to watch a clip from the — I'll say it again — four-hour conversation between the two and come away utterly baffled. A few highlights: Peterson wore a tuxedo to the interview (?), claimed "climate" doesn't exist because "climate is everything" (??) and asserted that more people die from solar energy than from nuclear energy because people fall off of rooftops while installing solar panels (???).
So, without further ado: enjoy some memes.
Examples
Molly Bradley
1. Surprised Austin Reaves Is All Of Us
The meme
37-year-old LeBron James continues to be one of the best players in basketball, but this year his team, the Los Angeles Lakers, aren't doing particularly well and might not even make the playoffs. That hasn't stopped James from being the savant that he is. Cameras caught James and Lakers rookie Austin Reaves sharing a brief moment where Reaves displays a flabbergasted facial expression while James is explaining a play to him. Reaves's honest and surprised look represents an emotion we've all been through, either when we've had someone make complete sense or utter nonsense up close in our ear.
Examples
Adwait Patil
And if you're hungry for more memes, here's last week's "The Week's Best Memes, Ranked" article, where we rank Microsoft buying Activision, Cassie hiding in the bathtub in "Euphoria" and four free COVID tests.