Projecting an “I care… just enough” vibe

April 11, 2025 11:12 AM

Replying ‘Haha So True!’ to Every Meme Your Friend Sends: An Experimental Study in Preserving Social Bonds with Minimum Effort from the Journal of Astrological Big Data Ecology
posted by chavenet (30 comments total)

👍
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:37 AM on April 11 [13 favorites]

k
posted by mittens at 11:47 AM on April 11 [4 favorites]

HST
posted by subdee at 12:15 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

interesting
posted by Reverend John at 12:24 PM on April 11

cool
posted by bigendian at 12:29 PM on April 11

Nice!
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:32 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

Oh man, that’s on point.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 12:40 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

haha. so true!
posted by hydra77 at 12:40 PM on April 11 [5 favorites]

HST

But what if your friends are like me and think "Truman?"
posted by trig at 12:42 PM on April 11 [4 favorites]

Or like me and they think "Hunter S. Thompson?"
posted by emelenjr at 12:44 PM on April 11 [5 favorites]

Hubble Space Telescope?
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:49 PM on April 11 [3 favorites]

oh yes need to replicate this in workplace colleagues
posted by crime online at 1:04 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

I lol’d
posted by toodleydoodley at 1:19 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Honestly, chavenet, you have NO idea how much your posts mean to me. Like, I wake up every day because I know there’s at least one witty post waiting from you. 😂 without these fleeting bursts of cringe-worthy Best of the Web, I would’ve already thrown in the towel on life ages ago. 😩 I just hope that someday, somehow, I can be even half the fellow MeFite that you are to me. Post on, my digital soulmate. 🥹💯🔥
posted by solotoro at 1:50 PM on April 11 [17 favorites]

Hahahahahahah!
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:04 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

.
posted by moonbird at 2:09 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

noice!
posted by SPrintF at 2:23 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

QFT
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:49 PM on April 11 [1 favorite]

Whenever I see a "Why" question in AskMeFi, I'm tempted to reply "Because you touch yourself at night". Opinions vary on whether or not this would be funny.
posted by Paul Slade at 3:15 PM on April 11 [6 favorites]

Ok so I have a dear friend from college and we are both busy exhausted people and so 85% of our text communication is just memes and sometimes I imagine his funeral and me weeping like a mess wailing “but who am I going to send my Star Trek jokes to now?????????” You call it low content I call it a lifeline
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:12 PM on April 11 [16 favorites]

A real friend would never send memes
posted by smcdow at 5:29 PM on April 11 [2 favorites]

me weeping like a mess wailing “but who am I going to send my Star Trek jokes to now?????????”

You semi-joke St. Peepsburg, but when my friend died a few years ago any topic that I had in common with him only, every in-joke, the whole history of our shared life was stopped cold, bam. So yeah, I absolutely get and support your weeping and wailing!
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:42 PM on April 11 [10 favorites]

Whenever I see a "Why" question in AskMeFi, I'm tempted to reply "Because you touch yourself at night". Opinions vary on whether or not this would be funny.

I post this.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:12 PM on April 11 [3 favorites]

My version of projecting an "I Care ... just enough" vibe is sending stock Happy Birthday greetings to all my friends. It's touching how many people reply, either with a "thank you" comment or a heart emoji. I do it while eating my breakfast each morning. It feels good, the way exchanging drugstore valentines did when I was in first grade. I started out personalizing the messages but now I mostly just accept Facebook's suggestions, tacky emojis and all.
posted by mr vino at 6:01 AM on April 12 [4 favorites]

Really funny, thanks for this. I spend more time than I'd like every day constructing variations of "Haha so true" in response to my needy text-happy friends... and hoping they don't see through me.
posted by Rykey at 6:07 AM on April 12 [3 favorites]

💯
posted by theora55 at 8:10 AM on April 12 [2 favorites]

My version of projecting an "I Care ... just enough" vibe is sending stock Happy Birthday greetings to all my friends. It's touching how many people reply, either with a "thank you" comment or a heart emoji. I do it while eating my breakfast each morning. It feels good, the way exchanging drugstore valentines did when I was in first grade.

Me too. I do those and I do the Finch version. I'm sending a lot of kudos into the universe :)
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:34 AM on April 12 [1 favorite]

I find it easier just to not to have friends
posted by fullerine at 11:28 AM on April 12 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: I find it easier just not to have friends.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:18 AM on April 13 [4 favorites]

You semi-joke St. Peepsburg, but when my friend died a few years ago any topic that I had in common with him only, every in-joke, the whole history of our shared life was stopped cold, bam. So yeah, I absolutely get and support your weeping and wailing!

Yeah, an old friend died of melanoma turned brain tumor like five years ago. I very much miss our Futurama meme correspondance, I have no-one else to forward cousin Zoidfarb's excellent Xmas card to on Xmas!
posted by fridgebuzz at 10:36 AM on April 13 [2 favorites]