/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke is a subreddit dedicated to explaining memes, it is directly tied to Peternity aswell as the u/peterxplainsthejoke account on reddit.
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| Status | Active |
|---|---|
| Subscribers | 220,000+ |
| Owner | u/PeterExplainsTheJoke (Peternity) |
| Founded | May 26, 2019 |
| Founder | Peternity (user) |
| Discord | Peternity |
| Link | https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/ |
What Fits into The Subreddit
Questions about the context of memes posted within reddit or on different platforms, to be answered by generous users. (Maybe like you.)
Rules
1. If a meme is so obvious : Example being loss comics, it will be removed.
2. No Discrimination, even if unintended
3. Once a joke is explained, dont repost it again for a while
4. Don’t post dogwhistles.
History
Short Summary
On May 24th, 2019 Peternity created an account known as u/peterexplainsthejoke, where he would essentially take the ironic "Peter Explains it" meme from subreddits such as /r/OkBuddyRetard and apply it to the Reddit comment section. With this account he would explain what the joke or context was behind a certain meme. The u/peterexplainsthejoke account would quickly grow in it's number of followers, frequenting subreddits such as DankMemes and other big ones the account would see a massive amount of growth (10 Thousand followers) in about 4 days.
Eventually enough as Peternity himself proclaimed, he was quickly starting to annoy people, especially moderators of subreddits. Soon enough the account would be banned off r/DankMemes, which was where the account commented on the most and garnered the most attention at.
Peternity would get quite lucky as he was friends with one of the moderators of the subreddit, the friend would manage to get all the other mods to be convinced to unban the account, it would carry as normal for the next couple of days, until eventually a seemingly out of nowhere ban was applied once more to u/peterexplainsthejoke.
Peternity eventually announced what had happened on his account and it would spiral into a site-wide brigade against the entire DankMemes subreddit. This however would quickly result in Peternity's account being pretty much banned on most big meme subreddits (due to them being owned by just a few people.) The cheeto dust was wiped from their hands, the account was banned from most major meme subreddits, and mentions of it's existence were also purged from many subreddits, anyone who mentioned the account would be banned.
Hundreds, or even thousands of accounts were banned thanks to this. The subreddit /r/PeterExplainsTheMeme was created as a refuge for people who were still interested in getting to know the context behind a meme and having it be answered by Peter himself. The subreddit would somewhat slowly but surely dwindle in popularity over the years, albeit recently there was a huge popularity spike, with the subreddit going from around ~100 Thousand members to around ~200 Thousand members in just a few months. Nowadays the u/peterexplainsthejoke account is not answering questions on the subreddit, it is rather it's users. With a huge amount of new members not knowing the origins behind the subreddit's creation.
What Peternity usually does is for every May 24th he returns for his "wholesome cakeday" and returns to reddit for a day to explains jokes again.
Recent Growth of the Subreddit
During the middle of 2023, the subreddit would see unimaginable growth, powered by the posts appearing in r/all and redditors probably being curious about the context of the memes being posted there, the subreddit would see a massive spike in popularity. Going from just around 30 thousand subscribers in October 2022 to around 220 thousand in late 2023. In short, the subreddit was pretty much picked up by the algorithm.
Sister Subreddit, r/explainitpeter
On October 20th, 2018 the subreddit /r/ExplainItPeter was created, as of now it is currently partnered with /r/PeterExplainsTheJoke. The subreddit itself is dedicated to to a format wherein a meme is suffixed by a block of text written in the first person perspective of a character, traditionally, but not restricted to Peter. The explanation should be at the very least semi-verbose and should also be accompanied of a picture of the explaining character. Think of "I'm Stuff" Memes.
List of Subreddit Moderators
- u/PeterExplainsTheJoke
- u/KakyoinExplainsIt
- u/Larkeyyy