A Guide to Children’s Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: Cave Diving Memes
This week I’ll explain why Generations A and Z eat rotten meat, make fun of cave explorers, brag about their emergency contacts, and have a very emotional crush on an angler fish. Everyone is having a very normal week.
What do all the cave diving memes mean?
If your social media feeds are full of videos of shoes and boots being turned upside down in various places, you’ve witnessed memes about “cave diving.” While “cave diving” actually refers to the exploration of underwater caves, that’s not what the memes are about: young people joke about cavers cramming themselves into tiny crevices until all that’s visible are the soles of their boots. Here is a real life example:
Here are some comedic moments.
How a cave diver checks oil:
A cave diver walks through a door:
A cave diver notices a crack in the wall:
Cave diver at the Sydney Opera House:
I’m sure you get the idea.
The meme has spread because it’s easy to make and funny, but it’s partly based on a photo of the boots of John Edward Jones, who climbed into a tiny crack in Nutty Putty Cave in 2009 and couldn’t climb back out. Despite the efforts of hundreds of rescuers, Jones was so firmly stuck in the tiny crack that nothing could be done to free him. He died 28 hours later as his would-be rescuers watched helplessly. Much less funny than memes.
What is “high meat”?
Over the past few years, young people online have been sharing stories and recipes for “high meat” or “fermented meat”, which is raw meat that is left to rot and then eaten. “Why?” you may be asking. Because it supposedly makes you feel better.
Don’t follow the recipe below:
To be fair, cooking your own meat, also known as “fermented meat,” isn’t a widespread trend, but it’s interesting because it sits on the far border of two larger movements. Proponents of high meat consumption are usually people following a “carnivore” or “paleo” all-meat diet , like this guy . The “it makes you feel good” part puts fermented meat on the fringes of the psychonaut community, where people are always looking for new substances to change their minds. It also reminds me of the many “things that get you high” hoaxes that pop up every few years among young people, such as Jenkem or smoking banana peels .
Fermented meat seems like a way to make an already extreme diet even more extreme. The beefy carnivore guys who eat rotten meat remind me of those hippies who can’t get enough of veganism, so they become raw vegans or fruitarians. I almost hate to tell the most hardcore cavemen about this, but tons of people eat raw, fermented meat all the time: pepperoni and salami are made from fermented raw meat, as are many other common foods. They’re prepared by professionals using time-tested methods, so they don’t (usually) cause food poisoning or get you high, but still: raw fermented meat right in my sandwich.
What does “twist” mean?
“Twist” is, well, a variation of the old phrase “don’t twist.” When someone says, “Don’t twist it,” it is a promise that what follows will be the unvarnished truth. When someone says “twist it,” they are lying to you. It all started in the online gambling community, where a couple of famous streamers were abusing the phrase “don’t get it twisted”, leading to the creation of remixes that went something like this:
it became this:
(For more information on youth slang, see my post Mewing, Sigma, and Other Gen Z and Alpha Slang You Might Need Help Deciphering .)
“Jerkmate Ranked: The Game” is out for real
Last month, I wrote funny memes online about “Jerkmate Ranked,” an imaginary competitive video game based on a pornographic media platform. This week, in the case of memes imitating life, Jerkmate actually released a game. However, Jerkmate Ranked: The Game does not create a leaderboard based on the amount of time a person spends on the site. It is a clicker game where users click on the screen to keep the robot entertained. The more clicks, the higher you will rise on the leaderboard. I try not to judge, but maybe people could do something else?
What is the “my emergency contact” trend?
Not all young people eat rotten meat and snap for no reason. There are also normal people, for example, those who make the “My Emergency Contact” video. This useful and funny meme template involves showing your partner doing something stupid with the text “my emergency contact” overlaid on top of it, as if to say, “Can you believe this is the person who will get a call from the hospital if I get into an accident?” That’s all it takes, but the result is a funny and touching reminder that we’re all a bunch of fools.
Here are a couple of examples:
Viral videos of the week: heroic angler fish and Vivivi the kitten
Two animal videos went viral this week for very different reasons.
First, a sad story about a heroic angler fish. Last week, scientists off the coast of Spain captured on video for the first time the black sea devil fish, also known as the humpback angler. They usually stay hundreds of meters below sea level, but this one swam straight to the surface for unknown reasons. Then it died, causing people to imagine a fisherman who only wanted to see the sun:
I mean people were excited about the fish:
Or they pretended that they were going to save him:
However, I’ll leave things on an optimistic note: the second viral video this week isn’t causing any emotional pain at all. This is just a kitten so cute that people all over the world watch him eat his little food and say “wee-wee-wee” and “oooh!” Amazing.