/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.
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| Status | Closed |
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| 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/ |
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
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.
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.
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The Banishment of The B Emoji
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)
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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.
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
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| — u/Hyperion |
Govern
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| — u/Govern_ |
Ibradude
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| — u/Ibradude67 |
soviet_garfield001
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| — /u/soviet_garfield001 |
ufuw
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| — u/ufuw |
Sloggerface
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| — u/Sloggerface |
MasterCyconide
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| — u/MasterCyconide |
List of Subreddit Moderators
Banned Content
The 🅱️ emoji within image posts post the B ban of January 23rd, 2019.