this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2026
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Greentext

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This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

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[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 62 points 5 days ago (11 children)

Why do people even keep folders of memes? Are they archiving for future generations?

[–] xkbx@startrek.website 67 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

(It’s so I can reply quickly with them, but this is the only one I have saved.)

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago (7 children)

Yeah but how is digging through a folder of memes any faster than simply googling the image you want?

[–] homik@slrpnk.net 29 points 5 days ago (4 children)
[–] binarytobis@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

Every time I can’t find an old internet thing lament not having a meme folder. 😭 Who knew the internet would just forget about stuff.

[–] InnerScientist@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago
[–] FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 21 points 5 days ago

I suppose its the same speed but in my case it felt less awkward to fetch ^ image above than to search "meme where a black guy is facing the viewer and pointing to his car radio in a car"

And in anon's case its way more efficient then googling "naked gigachad image, black and white, bearded short hair big pecs" and hoping the right one will come up.

So I suppose it's a specificity problem

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Adding to what others have said, so much internet has been purged in recent years that the meme might very well be lost media.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

yeah, i used to from bookmark articles and recipes on the internet i want to use in the future. Now I transcribe them into my personal database of useful text files. which is backed up five to six places right now (internet, computers, phones, plus paper copies of all the recipes) so i shouldn't have to worry about losing shit.

should(n't) is one of my least favorite words tho

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Every day we drift closer to MySpace

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

You know how they say something only exists when it's backed up in three separate places?

My automatic backup fucked up today and wiped my music collection on 3 of my 5 backups (the other two are manual and one is air gapped). I haven't panicked like that since I lost my first set of buttholes.

[–] Abrinoxus@lemmy.today 2 points 4 days ago

Three different media and locations isnt it? Did you print it and store it at some friends house:)?

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 days ago

Duuuuude, the last time I had to deal with panic that strong, it was because my parents were asking why I had to have so many drives, before tugging on my open rig to try to pull them out. What the fuck, dad? YOU DON'T EVEN LIVE HERE

[–] coolie4@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I dont archive memes but I think its 2-part

  1. They can't google 4chan OC because it disappears before it can be indexed
  2. Its not just about finding an image, but also about finding an image with the right caption, so they dont have to caption it themselves, because work
[–] Unique_Emerald_Sol_I@sh.itjust.works 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

As a minor language nerd, I would like to posit a 2.5, if you will: memery as a dialect and individual memes as bespoke words.

Like, consider this sequence of emoji: 🌍 🧑‍🚀 🔫 🧑‍🚀

Chances are, you're familiar enough with memes that you can infer the meaning of an English sentence which has nothing to do with the actual representational meaning of those emoji independently. By placing them in this specific context, I have communicated a meaning beyond their intended representation.

By a similar token, different specific memes under the same genre (e.g. Gigachad) may be equated with synonyms, and different contexts may call for different "words" (i.e. individual memes).

I pray Lord Apollo is kind enough to me for that to make sense because Hypnos is buzzing 'round my head and it's getting hard to think

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Sokath, his eyes uncovered!

It's bang on how the aliens in the TNG episode Darmok communicate. Their spoken language is based entirely on metaphors and historical/cultural references, and meaning is derived from a shared understanding of those memes within the present context.

[–] Unique_Emerald_Sol_I@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I've not seen a whole lot of TNG so I've only managed to hear about that episode thru this exact kind of talk -- I know I need to look it up and I'm glad you mention the episode title b/c I don't think I'd heard it before.

[–] rtxn@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

It's universally considered one of the best episodes of all of Star Trek, up there with The Drumhead and The Measure of a Man. TNG is at its best when it touches contemporary philosophical subjects within the framework of sci-fi and an enlightened human golden age.

If you're not committed to watching the entire series and don't mind missing some minor context, you should probably start with season 2. Season 1 ("before the beard") is an extremely mixed bag, including one hilariously racist episode.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Fuck the drumhead was so good…

[–] jaycifer@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

It’s not always easy to find the exact meme I have in mind, there have been a couple times that I gave up on internet searching for one because it just wasn’t showing up. I also prefer scrolling through a bunch of memes that I’ve already vetted as good rather than the sea of meme trash the internet holds.

[–] teslekova@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

Google sucks these days, it's way faster.

[–] Ironrod@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I was looking for the old "You may be cool, but you'll never be 5 popped collars cool" meme a few days ago and the only images I could find were thumbnails. I miss the old demotivational format

[–] DespairSquid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 days ago

I don’t remember the 5 one but I remember this one:

[–] idunnololz@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] ddplf@szmer.info 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] idunnololz@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

I don't want to expose my server to potentially millions of people :D

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

I have a few GB of prehistoric memes from the early days tucked away somewhere. Some of them have the black border and Garamond font caption. True fossils of the internet age.

[–] Gutek8134@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

On the phone I usually save and upload them to share with people, but not deleting them afterwards leaves me with a collection of memes I like, that I can browse every few months-years and look at how things have changed

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I feel like it's a form of brain training to be able to remember the right sequence of words to search to summon a niche meme

Meme folders are the junk food of internet society

Everyone is about instant gratification smdh

[–] Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I only keep the ones I made myself.

And maybe some real good ones that have an inspiring message.

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago

My goal in life, then, is to make a meme that is worthy of being saved in your folder.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago

Templates, reaction images, archives to access when the relevant opportunity arises.

[–] Neverclear@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago

...for posterior's sake.

[–] Hideakikarate@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago

I do know one person who has a litany of Psych memes ready for nearly any situation.