i use "tfw" more than "mfw", even when "mfw" would be more appropriate. i wonder what that says about me
judging by the sample size of the 7 people who answered my twitter poll, i am not alone in this
i think tfw is just funnier for abstract reasons, plus it implies that the viewer might have also experienced That Feel, and we all know that the Relatable Content is what the teens want
mfw is more for like, extremely specific circumstances that probably wouldn't have happened to anyone else i think
@lycaon I feel like, and maybe I'm just one of those meme purists -- a meme prescriptivist, if you will -- I feel like mfw packs more punch with a crisply paired reaction image
@Trev yeah definitly, you can't have a mfw with out the "mf"
if i were mike rugnetta i'd probably have some broad semiotic point to make about the use of tfw and mfw, or perhaps something to say about their evolution from 4chan greentext standards to options in the tool belt of everyone looking to make good posts (but not, say, the >arrows or the phrasing eg:
>be me
>be 17), but i'm not mike rugnetta so that's all i'll say
also a good point that @Trev brought up is that tfw doesn't necessarily require an image -- one can just say "tfw" and conjure That Feel in their audience, while mfw basically requires an image to be the titular "my face"
@lycaon @Trev yeah i totally agree. The flexibility, generality and interpretation make it a better tool for communicating feelings rather than mfw which communicates a specific instance of an image. The lost generality and interpretation make it stricter in its use and less interesting in communication, at least to me. It seems like something is lost in communication when using a specific image representing your reaction, rather than an abstract claim
@lycaon honestly part of the reason i prefer tfw to mfw is that mfw is more tied to 4chan in my mind, for whatever reason
trans slur Afficher plus
@lycaon i think it's because tfw escaped 4chan memetically; when i think of tfw i think of the "tfw no gf" meme, which has been so mixed and remixed and moved over the years that i barely know where it originally came from
@HTHR for some reason i've been thinking a lot about how the
>open the door
>get on the floor
>everybody walk the dinosaur
meme has completely left the zeitgeist. probably because it's so dependent on the greentext style of storytelling
@lycaon @HTHR I'm sort of happy that certain things have memetically escaped 4chan because they're funny and I like using them. But I'm also a little upset because only some of the good stuff escaped and there are still a load of good joke formats that don't really work unless you want to post on 4chan (which, in 2017, I definitely don't)
@lycaon this is probably correct and you're a fucking formalist