By rendering a scandalized look on a Baroque princess as "me when my boss books a 7 AM meeting," we pay homage to the agelessness of human feeling, even if we're here to mock our caffeine droughts. So the next time you look at a Victorian portrait overlaid with "When someone asks if you've tried turning it off and on again," take a moment to realize that you're involved in a centuries-old conversation.
People dressed in fancy robes and fancy wigs might not have had smartphones, but they knew precisely how it felt to have to suffer through disappointment, judgment, and that waking-up-early-on-Monday horror. In those split seconds of recognition, you’re not just amused, you’re connected to a shared human tapestry that stretches back through every brushstroke, centuries before the first meme ever went viral.
