A meme is the shortest distance between something we all recognise and something we all feel. That's why a community that memes together builds faster than one that only talks — every good one is a piece of shared memory that anybody can pick up and add to.
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01
The Brain
Where it starts. The turn — taking something familiar and making it mean something else. Of everything here, this is the only part that's actually yours.
Ask: could somebody else make the next one from this shape? If they could, you've made a tool, not a joke, and the room will pick it up. I →
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02
The Eyes
What you reach for. The image everyone already knows: recognition is the entry fee, and if you have to explain where it's from you've lost the room before you start.
Ask: does the room already know this face? A reaction everyone reads in half a second is worth more than a perfect frame nobody recognises. V →
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03
The Throat
Delivery — timing, and knowing when to stop. The instinct is always to add one more line making sure people got it, and that line is the one that kills it.
Ask: which line could you cut? Cut it. Two words on the right face beat a paragraph on any face. I →
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04
The Heart
The half-second where you realise it's about you. That's the payload, and it's why a meme can't be explained to an outsider without explaining the whole culture that made it. If it lands on you, you were there.
Ask: is it “ha, good one”, or “ha — and that's actually us”? Only the second kind gets a 👁, and only the second kind is what a culture is made of. IV →
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05
The Legs
Whether it can travel without a translator. A meme that needs a footnote stays home. The ones that get out are how anyone finds us in the first place.
Ask: would it land on someone who has never heard of Orion? An ordinary setup with the face as the punchline travels; an in-joke stays in the room. V →
Nobody bothers to meme someone they don't care about. Teasing is what closeness sounds like — it's the difference between an audience and a room full of people who actually know each other. Great leaders understand this, and the greatest ones laugh first. That's the permission this whole board runs on. from the philosophy, VII →