Previously, Bored Panda was lucky enough to get in touch with the people who run the Facebook page ‘Memes so literal they aren't even memes,’ and they told us that their small team has been making memes together since 2018.
"We all ran different OC meme pages of varying themes on our own but enjoyed working together on group projects. This was one of those. One of our admins who helped pioneer the 'birds aren't real' meme trend came up with the idea. We figured it was such an absurd concept that it wouldn't go anywhere, but then a Megamind meme just took off, so we kept going,” they shared.
The memes that can be found on the page are a combination of the team’s original works and things they have discovered online. "Every so often, one of us finds a repost on Reddit that works with the concept but we make the majority of our own stuff," they explained. "Anything with 'arbitrary watermark' somewhere on it was made by one of us."
Since the last time they spoke with Bored Panda almost 4 years ago, the team’s page has grown to 112k followers (almost 2.5 times). At the time, they mostly attributed their success to their name.
“The individual memes aren't usually that funny but the fact that we're beating a dead horse kinda makes it funnier," one of the team members said. "Like sometimes the joke is just that we're still making this same general joke and it keeps being funny. Meta on several levels."
They also think that literal memes work because their straightforwardness catches people off guard. "The world has been so messed up this past year... Maybe people just want something simple to digest that isn't trying to change their mind about something."
However, such a kind of humor might not be for everyone, as even the creators of the page are surprised it even took off. "It may surprise people to know that they can take more work than the average OC post. Sometimes, there is even research involved. For instance, I wouldn't know Young Thug's legal name had we not started this page."
These literal memes that the page features are quite similar to dad jokes, as both rely on simple and direct humor that is generally unoffensive and easy to understand, making them appealingly funny to a broad audience. Or they could be assigned to the anti-humor and anti-joke category, which is a type of alternative humor that is based on the absence of a joke in a narration that is set up to be one.
