DeepFriedMemes

DeepFriedMemes

Status	Closed
Subscribers	1,000,000+
Owner	u/Hyp3r10n
Founded	October 5, 2015
Founder	u/JesusHChristOnABike
Discord	Deep Fried Memes
Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepFriedMemes/

/r/DeepFriedMemes was a subreddit dedicated to posting "deep fried images." Images that have been constantly reposted and re-filtered so many times that they have a yellowish, low quality. But this doesn't qualify for what a deep fried meme stands, it should also parody "ghetto culture." in order to fully become a deep fried meme. The subreddit was shutdown on January 1st, 2021, together with a formal statement from the moderators of the subreddit detailing why it was that way.

What Fits into The Subreddit

Abstract memes run through several filters, often using proto hood-ironic content and deep frying it. Note that deep frying any meme doesn't actually make them a "deep fried meme". The purpose of deep frying is to parody ghetto humor.

Top 5 Posts

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Rules

• 1. No reposts. Offenders will be banned. Repeated offenders will be permabanned. If you intend on posting something, make sure that it has not already been posted here.
• 2. No upvote begging / whoring
• 3. Please have text on the fried meme. Pictures with text are better. Straight up pictures with a filter will LIKELY be removed
• 4. Punchline must not be in title. Don't put the punchline in title. The meme must hold its own.
• 5. No politics or social commentary
• 6. Don't post content that, when not fried, would fit better on other subreddits. Deep frying any meme doesn't actually make them a "deep fried meme". The purpose of deep frying is to parody ghetto humor, it doesn't magically make any shitty meme funnier or "danker". Content in a style that fits better in other subs are not allowed here.
• 7. No raw/lazily fried memes. Memes that can be considered lazily fried, nuked, or just very shitty in general may be removed. You shouldn't just add one filter of noise, but you shouldn't add 10,000 filters of everything either.
• 8. Use imgur or reddituploads. Only post images hosted by imgur or reddituploads.
• 9. No "B" emoji. The 🅱 emoji spam is not allowed anymore.
• 10. No edgy memes
• 11. No Advertising or Brigading. Posting memes or comments that advertise other subreddits and forms of media, or those that may encourage brigading will result in a permanent ban from the subreddit. Note that this only includes intentional advertising.
• 12. Mods' Discourse. Mods reserve themselves the right to remove/approve content they want even if it doesn't explicitly break/conform to a rule.

Timeline of Subreddit Events

Origins

On October 6th, 2015, user u/JesusHChristOnABike started the subreddit /r/DeepFriedMemes, a subreddit devoted to posting deep fried images who had been already spreading through the internet for some time on other platforms like Tumblr or Facebook. The subreddit had over 9,000 subscribers as of February 16th, 2017. On November 21st, 2016, Urban Dictionary user memegod420 uploaded a definition to the site,writing, "When a high quality meme is screen shot, reposted and re-filtered so many times over that it has a yellowish, low quality resolution and looks like it was deep fried."

Creation of The First DFM discord server

On January 5th, 2017 mod u/Kirbizia would ask the owner of the DFM subreddit, u/JesusHChristOnABike if she could create an official discord server for the subreddit, JesusH would agree and the first DFM server was created and an announcement would be shortly pinned afterwards, this event would kickstart what was to be known as the discord irony community, many meme-related servers usually tied to subreddits, there would be three more deepfriedmemes discord servers made in the future after the previous ones were nuked.

r/2ndhandembarassments

On March 8th, 2017 the creator of the subreddit would announce that he requested a new subreddit called r/2ndhandembarrasments and received it from a reddit request. He wanted to get it active and going but as of now the subreddit has not really gotten anywhere.

More Jpeg Bot Vote

On March 15th, 2017 a strawpoll vote would be casted by the owner of the subreddit regarding if the "more jpeg bot" should be banned, as there had been previous complaints and the moderators weren't too fond of the bot within the comments. As it could have been seen as spam and a joke that had been run into the ground. The users were very much in favor of keeping the bot though, thus it stayed.

DFM Premium

On April 1st, 2017 mod u/Kirbizia would pull a small april fools joke related to "deepfriedmemes premium." with an announcement on how to get it, though in reality after you clicked on the post the only thing that would appear there was "bottom text."

Shameless BHJ Promotion

On April 7th, 2017 mod u/kirbizia would start advertising her new subreddit known as /r/BoneHurtingJuice and post an announcement on DeepFriedMemes related to that, "r/bonehurtingjuice is all about antimeme memes if that makes sense."

Bad Post PSA

On May 10th, 2018 the owner of the subreddit would release a PSA regarding of what a frying is and what is not one, he would send some examples of poorly fried memes, they would primarly be posts which used the Photoshop noise and pixelate filter, which was not frying a meme.

The Banner

Banner Contest

On August 13th, 2017 a new mobile banner contest would be announced, the banner had to be 1280x384 and had to contain nothing NSFW related, users would send their submissions within the comments, there would only be around three submissions. On August 20th, 2017 mod u/A_BEAR_ON_FIRE would announce the winner of the banner contest. The user u/QDeltaE would be the winner of this event, with his "Top Text" banner submission, on top of this he would also receive a special flair for being a contest winner.

Demographics Poll

On August 18th, 2017 mod u/kirbizia would announce a /r/DeepFriedMemes demographics poll, as the moderators of the subreddit were somewhat curious about the type of people who browsed the subreddit. The results would be compiled and released in a week after enough people submitted their responces, such questions as ethnicity, gender and their favorite dfm meme would be asked within the poll.

Number of submissions : 322 over 2 days

Gender

• 307 Males 95.3%
• 15 Females 4.7%

Race

• 257 Caucasian 79.8%
• 49 Hispanic 15.2%
• 30 Black 9.3%
• 44 Asian 13.7%
• 16 Arabic 5%

Age

• 85 18-20 year olds 26.4%
• 50 17 year olds 15.5%
• 50 15 year olds 15.5%
• 44 16 year olds 13.7%
• 31 20-22 year olds 9.6%
• 26 14 year olds 8.1%
• 11 13 year olds 3.4%
• 9 23-25 year olds 2.8%
• 7 Under 10 2.2% (possibly a meme response)
• 4 26-30 year olds 1.2%
• 3 12 year olds 0.9%
• 2 Over 40 year olds 0.6%

Location

• 183 In United States 56.8%
• 83 In Europe 25.8%
• 19 In Canada 5.9%
• 12 In South America 3.7%
• 10 In Asia 3.1%
• 8 In Australia 2.5%
• 5 In Africa 1.6%
• 2 In Mexico 0.6%

Discord Browsers (the most disappointing number to Kirbizia)

• 287 Don't Browse 89.1%
• 35 Browse 10.9%

Favorite Meme Sources

• 294 Like r/deepfriedmemes 91.3%
• 160 Like r/dankmemes 49.7% (very disappointing)
• 115 Like r/bonehurtingjuice 35.7% (very good)
• 108 Like r/me_irl 33.5%
• 74 Like r/comedycemetary 23%
• 65 Like r/4chan 20.2%
• 41 Like r/meirl 12.7%
• 31 Like /pol/ 9.6%
• 30 Like /b/ 9.3% (stop it edgelords)
• 30 Like r/ooer 9.3%
• 28 Like Instagram 8.7% :(
• 28 Like r/surrealmemes 8.7%
• 24 Like r/animemes 7.5% (yeet)
• 12 Like ifunny 3.7% (absolutely disgusting)
• 4 Like /v/ 1.2%
• 4 Like 9gag 1.2% (at least its smaller than ifunny)
• 3 Like /a/ 1.2%

• Favorite Meme The mods looked through the memes and chose the worst and best memes (in imgur albums) worst : http://imgur.com/a/u3CMN best : http://imgur.com/a/CJUci

Best Mod

• /u/sailend

100K Members and Prank Closure

The subreddit would be taken down by the mods for a short time after it reached 100 thousand members, though eventually it would be brought back with an announcement by moderator u/A_BEAR_ON_FIRE on September 14th, 2017.

“	Subreddit reinstated!!! 😂😂👌😳😳👌😩 WELCOME BACK EVERYONE!!! Thanks for liking these shitty memes so much 💪👀💪	„
	— u/A_BEAR_ON_FIRE

The Banishment of The B Emoji

29%...

On January 23rd, 2019 mod u/Govern would announce the ban on the "B" emoji within memes on r/DeepFriedMemes. One of the most influential decisions within the subreddit's history, this decision was not taken lightly by the users of the subreddit. The announcement itself only had a 29% upvote rate. This B emoji aswell as other letters would all be fully banned within the sub, these have had been existant since the beginning of the subreddit and were largely influential within the community, not many wanted to let them go, only few within the comment thread said that this was a good idea, usually due to argument of the subreddit slowly becoming unoriginal and that the subreddit would be better without it. But there was also the other side of the coin, users that wished for the B emoji to stay in some capacity, as it was considered to be a cornerstone of the fried meme community. Some stated that it's removal would be the end of the subreddit. Within the comment thread were rape threads to u/Govern_ (It was the most upvoted comment it even got a reward lmfao), but it also was not limited to just that, within the comment thread there would be other things like : calling the moderators "Cringe ((HARD Rs)), "retarded brain dead morons", calling them gay and saying that the subreddit was officially dead thanks to this controversial decision. (Govern would state that these were usually his friends and mods that sent these messages)

“	Hello everyone, welcome to yet another announcement by the /r/DeepFriedMemes Moderator Team, so let's get right into the annoucement shall we ; The 🅱 emoji and all the other letter emojis has been fully banned from the subreddit. We know that the 🅱 emoji has been here from the start however it has run its course and is not original anymore, we believe that the sub is lacking originality and that the subreddit would be better without it. I hope all of you can understand this decision, while we know this will cause a lot of backlash we think it would be benefitial to this place at the end. Have a wonderful day and continue being a great community.	„
	— u/Govern_

Eventually on January 25th, 2019 there would be a revision regarding the ban of th B emoji, users could still use the B emoji within their comments if the percent of Bs within comments did not exceed 20%, memes with the B emoji were still banned though. This was met with a somewhat warmer approach by the users of the subreddit but they still didn't like the introduction of this one specific rule as some feared that it may meet a similar fate to OkBR, in which there's constantly banned memes.

Feedback Thread

On April 1st, 2019 (No this isn't an april fools joke) the moderator u/Govern_ would announce a transparency and feedback thread for the subreddit, users could send their feedback aswell as hear what the moderators planned for the future of the subreddit. These threads were supposed to be made monthly, but this was the only ever created. Govern would talk about the development of the subreddit's bot, known as tomBOT, repost detections, and how the mods also wanted to try replying to modmail faster. There would also be a few discussions within the comments of this thread, topics such as the moderators being too strict and the subreddit becoming somewhat stale and edgy humor not being allowed were constantly talked about within it, this would lead to the creation of a certain subreddit within the near future.

Creation of /r/DFMAnarchy

On April 16th, 2019 the moderators would announce the creation of /r/DFMAnarchy, thanks to the monthly feedback thread it would be created as a safe refuge to those who liked the more edgy types of memes posted on /r/DeepFriedMemes, or a more unstrict atmosphere, a few other things would also be allowed on the subreddit such as the B emoji, as people were still recovering from the effects of it being banned off the original subreddit.

Creation of an Official DFM Instagram Account

On September 1st, 2019 mod u/ufuw would announce the creation of a deepfriedmemes Instagram account, @r_deep.fried.memes. It would serve as the official "best-of" catalog for the community. If a post of a user was a great example of a deep fried meme, it would appear within the Instagram account.

"Return to Our Roots" Campaign

On February 23rd, 2020 the "Return to our Roots" campaign would be announced by u/Hyp3r10n. After the moderation relaxed control over the subreddit around 2018, people would start frying whatever meme they could find using websites like deepfriedmeme.com, ruining what the subreddit was for. With many longtime users lamenting over what the subreddit once was, the goal of the campaign was to try to bring back a more quality subreddit that satisfied both newcomers and old users that wasn't a laughing-stock of meme subreddits (think of r/DankMemes)

Discord Meme Competition

On March 1st, 2020 a deepfriedmemes discord server meme competition would be announced by one of the mods on the subreddit, users could join the discord server, be active for a while and then create the best deep fried meme that they could make, there were several prizes like discord nitro, special roles and the submission that won having it be pinned on the subreddit. All of the three winning submissions would be posted onto the official DFM instagram too.

The Death of /r/DeepFriedMemes

On January 1st, 2021 the subreddit would be closed down with a public statement from the moderators, a "long time coming." As the subreddit and the concept of deep fried memes became more and more mainstream and as time went on, the quality of the subreddit would drop off immensely. The mod team would vote to close down the subreddit for this reason alone, the moderators would state within their public goodbye that they often became trapped in a cycle wherein the times in which moderation was not taking place as consistently, as a result of this the subreddit would become overpopulated with terrible posts, misguided in understanding the subreddit's main appeal and gimmic.

Rip Jah...

They would also state that reddit was simply too poorly designed in offering a consistently effective moderation system for them. Reddit had a somewhat unsustainable type of moderation, as a mod would burn out, another one would come around. It also became depressing to watch the subreddit's activity being slowly depleted as time went on, mods would be often frustrated with how people would complain about the subreddit even with all the moderation behind. The subreddit had gone through a depression for most of its life. Deep Fried Memes became a staple of meme culture as far back as 2016, and the posts within the subreddit were slowly becoming more and more corny and outdated. People would also begin to misinterpret and misunderstand the deep fried meme and the concept behind it, with there being people who just deep fry any regular meme and call it finished. "People followed the memes of /r/dankmemes and brought them over to DFM, often not for humor or quality sake, but for the plain and simple fact that on Reddit, riding a trend wave gets you tons of karma." The moderators would call this process "redditification", as other subreddits took the head spot from DankMemes like OkBuddyRetard or ComedyHeaven the posts from there would be deepfried and posted onto DFM.

Anything of value that was originally from the concept of what the subreddit was supposed to be was lost. The moderators would try to salvage the subreddit, with several rules over the years to amend and combat the biggest issues with the community, in general though. People did not like to obey these rules, even with the "Return to our Roots" campaign, every new rule and change that the moderators introduced; failed. An end of an era, as some might say. The subreddit was finally shutdown, and with it... The deepfriedmeme went into obscurity. Though, the discord server would still go on, it would be the last remnant of what was once a glorious subreddit, filled with groundbreaking never before seen memes. (A pitful state.)

Mod Goodbyes

The moderators of the subreddit thought it would be nice if they could write of their own free volition, giving their goodbyes. This section is exactly that.

Hyperion

“	I’ve been a part of this community for a very long time. I’ve browsed /r/DeepFriedMemes since 2016, and back then it was one of my favorite subs. I got involved in the community in 2017 and became a mod that same year. It’s insane to me how much time has passed, I’ve really grown up with DFM and I’ve seen everything crumble before my eyes. The disparity between the subreddit and the server was so massive it was something that couldn’t have been fixed, nor should it have been. I wish that I would have done things much sooner to combat all the issues facing the sub, but I’m not sure honestly that it would have been able to have been done. The primary issue with the subreddit had taken root in its very beginnings, and so it’s no wonder that it ended up this way. As I drifted toward the Discord and away from Reddit a lot of the love that I had for the site was gone. Truly it had died long ago, and its corpse had been rotting for some time. I had thought that I would be able to save it but at this point I’ve lost my faith in Reddit as a platform. It often placed a great burden on me as the owner of the subreddit and the discord server to carry both. I often felt as if I was the only one who really cared and I sinked unhealthy, embarrassing amounts of time into trying to make both the subreddit and the Discord the best they could be within my power. Reflecting on all of this, I’m reminded of a quote by Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.” And with that I give my farewell. I give my thanks to everyone over the years who has helped out and has been a part of this very formative experience for me. While sad, I feel it’s important that we move on from this chapter and begin anew. Thank you for taking me on this journey and I’m excited to see what’s next. That being said, I thought I’d share this playlist of music curated by the Discord.	„
	— u/Hyperion

Govern

“	I'll start off by saying that this subreddit means a lot to me, as silly as it sounds. I used to like the subreddit with it's original style of humour that was unique to the genre of deep fried memes. Nowadays the sub is a shell of its former self, and it doesn't matter how much we try to fix it, people simply will not listen to what moderators have in mind for the subreddit, despite only having good intentions. I believe that the disconnect from the origin and perpetual shift towards edgy and "dank" deep fried memes as main idea for what a deep fried meme is made the subreddit suffer from terrible posts that made browsing the subreddit, especially as a moderator, rather unenjoyable. We made rule 6 to combat it, which for those who don't know, was "Don't post content that, when not fried, would fit better on other subreddits, in other words, we tried to return to the roots of the subreddit. Obviously a lot of people did not even see the new rule, or just did not care because the subreddit was still getting filled with posts that were totally unfitting. I don't feel like this community is going in the right direction and I don't think it is something that I, or other mods for that matter, can fix. People grow up and lose interest, which is one of the other things that lead to the decision to close this subreddit for good. I used to like the community a lot, and it wasn't limited to just the subreddit. I found a lot of good people through the deep fried memes discord, which meant a lot for me during that time. I am glad I joined this community while it was still growing, but I don't know what to think of it anymore. People from the discord noticed the trend of the subreddit going downhill a lot earlier than most other users, it seems like, because they were there for longer and saw it at its peak. I don't feel like it will ever be at it's glory again, and the new user base won't understand that. If you think "You guys totally could have done better!!! Hire more people, get more people who understand stuff then!!!", you should consider that we had moderator applications open for the past 2 years without closing them once. Last few months we had close to 0 applications coming in, and those that came in were quite disappointing as they adapted the style of memes that simply do not fit with the original vision of the subreddit.	„
	— u/Govern_

Ibradude

“	There’s 8 million ways I could write on why I got burnt out from moderating but let’s make this clear and simple. It doesn’t feel like managing a community anymore, more like doing a laborious task, where 95% of the time you remove rule breaking posts that aren’t really the user’s fault. It’s Reddit’s fault, where the crushing majority of users are on new.reddit/mobile and have a more relaxed and simplified way of perceiving things, they care less about the rules, there’s less “personality” and customisation nowadays and it’s something we or you can’t control at all. Before that, you had one straight forward, quick to load and easy to tweak design (extensions like toolbox and RES, CSS etc…) and that factor of customisation made things more personal and distinct, made it look like if you were moderating, you were actually maintaining a website/forum. Nowadays, everything is centralised and dumbed down sadly, that’s the way the internet is currently going. And no, before you ask, I’m not wearing nostalgia glasses, things really turned to shit. There’s no soul, passion or personality behind it left...	„
	— u/Ibradude67

soviet_garfield001

“	While I have not been a mod, or even a reddit user, for a very long time, I was still around long enough to see the sub when it still had some pretty good stuff, and I had grown fond of it. While it’s disappointing that we were not able to save the reddit side of the community, the discord side is doing well. There are still amazing people that frequent the server, and I have made several good friends because of it. I hope that somewhere people might still be making deep fried memes in the old style, since few people wanted to do so in the dedicated community for it. With all that said, I hope some of you will join the server and maybe even make some new friends.	„
	— /u/soviet_garfield001

ufuw

“	/r/DeepFriedMemes was where I had my first and only major experience with moderation anywhere on the internet, and nearly 22 months after boarding the moderation ship, I can say that I really enjoyed my time here, if not only for the moments when I’d clear a mountain of shit to ensure that high quality OCs would make it to the front page. Knowing the other mods here, they’ve probably already listed their complaints, so I won’t bore you with the details of what went wrong with the subreddit. Instead, I’d just like to remind everyone to be creative; derivative content and trend-following kill communities, and in all honesty, the way Reddit works almost invariably discourages creativity. I am nothing but happy to leave this site’s meme community behind for much better sources of entertainment. Also, give K-ON! a chance; it’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely worth checking out on the off-chance you find yourself a fan. Personally, I fell in love with it, so much that having the series live rent-free in my head for the past 8 months was one of the biggest things to get me through “these unprecedented times.”	„
	— u/ufuw

Sloggerface

“	What can I even write here? I guess I could say that while moderating this subreddit went very strong in the first year, it all went down to hell fast later on. It was a joy to have some quality control in a subreddit where shitty content gets posted a lot. Having some guidelines was also a very good thing to have, like making sure the mod queue was clear. I also learned the many filters that can be used to fry memes, which ones should be used, and at which magnitude they should be used at. But alas we all got lazy and now the fate of /r/DeepFriedMemes is irreversible. Where will I be now on reddit? You can find me on the moderator lists of some other subreddits that I don’t care about, but mostly you’ll find me posting some fanart to certain subreddits like /r/WandersongFans, though it may be really rare to see me post. And before I end off my farewell message, please listen to the HelaSex - Couple Goals EP. My absolute favorite music release of 2020.	„
	— u/Sloggerface

MasterCyconide

“	While it's sad that we have to end things, truthfully I think it's better this way. All good things come to an end while others wear out their welcome. Take the Hellraiser series for example. They really made 10 of those movies huh when maybe they should've only stuck with three or four. Much like Hellraiser, this subreddit is just a mangled mess of what it used to be and trying to salvage it now will probably make it worse. I had a great time on this mod team, meeting a lot of the users here, and seeing the wacky shit you all excreted onto the subreddit. But those days are gone and I'll remember them fondly. Thanks for making me laugh, cringe, and smash that mf like button. Also I'm not using Reddit much, if at all, because this site is garbage. Here's some neat music for your ears: https://ropesect.bandcamp.com/album/personae-ingratae Goodbye.	„
	— u/MasterCyconide

List of Subreddit Moderators

• u/Hyp3r10n
• u/MasterCyconide
• u/_tomGER
• u/ufuw
• u/sloggerface
• u/Blank_Cheque
• u/Ibradude67 Notable ex-moderators include Govern and Kirbizia.

Banned Content

The 🅱️ emoji within image posts post the B ban of January 23rd, 2019.