• Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
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    4 days ago

    I thought “bless your heart” was just a meme up until I went back to my Midwestern home state with my wife (from Mexico) and our two chihuahuas. In a tourist “town” she’d gone into a bakery and I waited for her with the dogs outside.

    Another white family (I’m white) had walked up and started talking to me. They were pretty friendly up until I mentioned we were visiting from Los Angeles at which point they responded “bless your heart” in a heavy southern accent and immediately walked away. It was kind of jarring seeing that kind of behavior after years of living away from there.

    • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      Some small town rednecks think larger cities are some sort of crime ridden hell hole where you have a 78.3% chance of being murdered on any given day.

      I think they’re really just afraid of traffic and people who aren’t white.

    • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      I mean… It is a meme.

      I feel like everyone is forgetting that memes are any idea that spreads like a virus, and not just .webms of tweets with the phrase “nobody:” at the top

      • mika_mika@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        It’s offensive (for me) to consider the “nobody:” posts memes.

        Likewise, expressions are not memes either.

        I will gatekeep this, and if you think that’s wrong, just think of it like I’m making gatekeeping a meme.

        • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Likewise, expressions are not memes either.

          It’s ok to have an opinion, even when you’re objectively wrong. A meme is just ‘a unit of cultural transmission’, and image macros and funny pictures are all memes, just like phrases or dances are as well.