What’s up Sports Fanatics, this week is a special week for my blog. This week’s blog is centered around humor in the world of sports. It seems as if we all could use a good laugh nowadays with this pandemic going on. Besides needing a laugh, there’s also just not much to talk about since every sport is shut down for now. With that being said let me introduce you to a few memes. Also, this could be a helpful post if you don’t understand some of the meme “lingo” in sports! Here goes the first one:
The essence of this meme isn’t to burst into tears once you see/read it. Instead, the meme is more so used sarcastically. Let me put this into context. Your friend has been scrolling through sports twitter all day and stumbles upon a tweet that says Lebron James is interested in signing with his rivals, the Golden State Warriors. Your friend, without checking the source on the tweet, is so shocked by the breaking news headline that he immediately sends it to you, his sports buddy. In this scenario you could respond to your friend with “Wow. Big if true.” Why? Because you, an intelligent man in the world of sports, understands that your friends’ tweet is bogus so you send him that reply which is almost a mockery of him believing such an idiotic statement. Therefore, according to Patrick Davison’s The Social Media Reader, you could say that the ideals of this meme is to be sarcastic about something that you know is bogus. Now, lets look at the manifestation of this meme. The manifestation is usually about sports reporters who are trying to crack a sarcastic joke. The origin of the meme has deemed to be unclear, but it is a cliche statement in the world of sports broadcasting. The meme has went on to have appearances in the hit show Futurama. However, the spread of the meme has been linked to football analyst Ian Rapoport who often spreads rumors about the NFL (Adam, 2017). Time for the next meme:
This one is known as the super saiyan remix. The ideal of this meme is much easier to understand. Essentially, it is about a given person evolving into a more powerful form. This “super saiyan” idea stems from the animated show Dragon Ball Z. It is a very popular show in the world of sports. The manifestation of the meme is simply an ecstatic Phelps. And the behavior, or origin, of the meme came on August 12th, 2008. Youtube user Herald77 uploaded a mini video of Michael Phelps turning super saiyan after winning another gold medal. The spread of the meme however came from Youtuber alreson (Don, 2015). Alreson uploaded a video of the loud american radio host Alex Jones turning super saiyan in one of his heated debates. The meme has gone on to be edited over many sports stars like Lebron James. On to the last meme:
The last meme is a very popular one in the sports culture and it’s called “Bradying.” The meme stems from the people who hate on Tom Brady. So, when he did this pose in one of his football games, people took it and ran with it. To be exact, the photograph of Tom Brady sitting on the field was taken by AP photographer Paul Sancya after the New York Giants’ linebacker Chase Blackburn intercepted his pass during the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl game on February 5th, 2012 (Brad, 2012). Bradying is a photo fad the involves you sitting on the floor with your head down and hands between your legs. Essentially, you look like you just lost it all in that pose. The ideal of this meme is to just make fun of Tom Brady since many people just hate on him. The manifestation of the meme is simply a defeated Brady. And the origin is from that 2012 Super Bowl, and the spread of the meme came immediately after the game when fans took to tumblr and Facebook and started posting their own versions of the photo (Brad, 2012).
And with that, we conclude our mini crash course on sports memes. I hope this memes and the history behind them has appealed my Sports Fanatics worldwide during this crazy pandemic. I figured you guys might get a laugh out of them but I hope that I also educated you guys on these memes in case you didn’t really know the story behind them. If you can’t watch any sports its still good read things about sports. Take it easy everyone and I will see you next week. Brant Wolff signing off.
Alpha Sports 