You might have visited London a few times. You might even have done a brief exchange at a British university or lived in the United Kingdom for a spell. But it takes years and years to truly get to grips with the culture of the British Isles. It’s far more than afternoon tea, gorgeous accents, and red double-decker buses.
Comedy plays a huge part here. The quips can be just as crass as they’re witty, and more often than not they can make outsiders wonder what the heck is going on. That’s where the ‘No Context UK Facebook’ Twitter page comes in. We’ve collected some of their most hilarious memes to share with you. If these won’t make you do a double-take, we’re not sure what will. Scroll down and check them out!
Meanwhile, check out Bored Panda's interview with British comedy writer, published author, and music producer Ariane Sherine. Scroll down to read her thoughts.
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The ‘No Context UK Facebook’ page has over 194k followers on Twitter. It’s a pretty sizeable following that the founder of the account managed to amass since June 2018.
In the four and a half years since the page was first made, it has become one of the most popular niches of good, British humor on Twitter. Memes about culture, humor, and the everyday gentle chaos of living in the UK are quite a popular subgenre on social media. It’s hard to stand out from the competition!
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Bored Panda wanted a deeper insight into British humor and culture, so we got in touch with Ariane, a comedy expert, published author, and music producer. She found some time to answer our questions.
We were interested in what sets British humor apart from comedy in other countries, and whether it's actually unique. According to Ariane, it's "totally unique."
"It’s sarcastic, unglamorous, downbeat, and self-deprecating and I love it," she said.
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Meanwhile, Bored Panda wanted to get to grips with the biggest issues that are on the minds of Brits in 2023. We asked Ariane to weigh in on what's troubling the UK population.
"Corruption in the Tory party and energy prices rising are the main two," she told us. "Basically, nobody ever likes the government (though I’m definitely not a fan of them either)."
As a bit of fun, we were curious about what a quintessentially British tour of London might look like. Say, if a local wanted to impress their friends who flew in from abroad. Comedy writer Ariane was happy to share what that might look like.
"Well you’ve got to go to Big Ben, London Bridge, the Tower of London, maybe Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guard… but you can see most things from a trip on the London Eye or a speedboat down the Thames."
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Somewhat ironically, the ‘No Context UK Facebook’ page jokes that some of its posts actually come with extra context. Usually, contextless memes are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they definitely stand out from the crowd because they’re confusing, weird, and force you to start thinking about what the everloving frick is going on in the picture.
However, that’s the downside, too: you’re essentially forcing the audience to do a lot of independent thinking. In this day and age, having to figure things out on your own might not be up everyone’s alley, especially on social media. Usually, short, compact, instantly-relatable memes get the most attention.
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Like it or not, our attention spans really are getting shorter and shorter. Dr. Gloria Mark, from the University of California, Irvine, explained to CNN that our decline in the ability to focus has been tracked for decades.
“In 2004, we measured the average attention on a screen to be 2½ minutes. Some years later, we found attention spans to be about 75 seconds. Now we find people can only pay attention to one screen for an average of 47 seconds,” she said.
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The problem isn’t just that it’s harder to concentrate. When we’re distracted or if someone diverts our attention elsewhere, it can take around 25 minutes for us to refocus on the work we have in front of us. So if a colleague or a friend sends you a funny meme in the middle of your workflow, it’ll take nearly half an hour for you to return to your previous state of deep work.
The jaw-dropping reality is that people these days spend a huge amount of time in front of computers, their phones, and the TV. For example, your average American spends at least 10 hours a day on screens.
The way to fight back against tech taking over your life is to actively take breaks from screens. Walking in nature can help. Meanwhile, the antidote for our shortening attention spans is consuming long-form content like longer articles and books. It’s an ongoing struggle.
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Within the context of social media and shortening attention spans, the way that we consume news has also changed. Many companies have had to adapt to new formats and look for ways to engage their audiences more. Part of that means repackaging information in different ways to make it more accessible in a world where every second of attention matters more and more.
"People consume news from a much broader variety of sources, on a much wider set of platforms. We are awash in information and we are used to seeing it in small chunks," Professor Lisa McLendon, from the University of Kansas, explained to Bored Panda recently.
According to the professor, engagement, as well as brevity are becoming more and more valued than in-depth reporting. The latter still has its place, but the spotlight is now on other things.
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"News outlets have adapted headlines to catch people’s eyes and presentation to keep the audiences engaged. For example, if you look at how news is presented on a platform like Instagram, it’s presented visually in a short video or series of images so people can quickly get the main point. Most of these changes have happened to optimize speed and engagement, not depth," the professor said.
Meanwhile, in-depth reporting is still valuable because some news stories simply can’t be summarized in short-format posts. However, there’s still a need to engage the audience: you need to present the story in a creative way and add photos, videos, maps, graphics, and interactive elements to keep people’s attention on your content.
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Journalism and social media posts are a lot of hard work! Especially these days. And the competition for people’s attention is only to increase as more and more people start using the internet. There were 413 million internet users in 2000. This number rose to a jaw-dropping 3.4 billion people in 2016. An average of 640k people went online for the first time every single day
That means that there’s a larger than-ever number of content creators to contend with! On the flip side, there are so many more people to amuse with memes and funny pics, too. It all depends on how you look at it.
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Which of these memes did you enjoy the most, Pandas? Which ones did you relate to the most? What do you love the most about British humor and culture? Have you ever lived in the UK or are you a local? Share your thoughts in the comments. Meanwhile, if you enjoyed these memes, check out Bored Panda's earlier article about 'No Context UK Facebook' right here.
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