Viral

A John Mulaney Meme Perfectly Describes Movies, Bands, Plays, Professional Athletes, And Everything Else

Netflix

If you don’t already know who comedian John Mulaney is (how?), he’s a guy you’ve seen a bunch of places without realizing it. He’s the the co-creator of the Stefon character on SNL, the voice of Spider-Ham, and he’s shared the perfect analogy about Donald Trump and has strong feelings about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s also the inspiration for a meme that can come in handy for describing so many fandoms, from music to movies to plays and even baseball players and professional wrestlers.

The origin of the meme came from Anja Reese last year, when she shared a Twitter thread of captioned screencaps of John Mulaney, describing famous musicals with Mulaney quotes from his stand up specials. Later in the year, YouTuber True Virgo made a nearly five minute-long version of Othello using John Mulaney clips. We’ll get to those examples in a moment, but first let’s talk about how the meme really took off this week.

Exactly one year after Reese’s original thread, Twitter user Ayrbee started a similar meme which then sparked several imitators over the past few days. Ayrbee’s thread summarized “pop punk bands of the 2000s as John Mulaney quotes,” and there were several fitting examples:

https://twitter.com/Tyler_Magazzu_/status/1090200688276193280
https://twitter.com/kimmi_page/status/1090281482311139328
https://twitter.com/kimmi_page/status/1090280425279377414

Several other Twitter users then applied John Mulaney quotes to their own favorite topics. James McKenna used them to describe professional wrestlers:

And a joke thread about professional wrestlers wouldn’t be complete without one for Vince McMahon:

Then Amanda Smith came along to describe the 2018 Dodgers as John Mulaney quotes:

It wasn’t only modern music getting parodied. Liora Strong applied John Mulaney quotes to classical composers:

Returning to the meme that started it all, here are some of our favorites from Anja Reese‘s original thread summarizing musicals (and movies) with John Mulaney quotes:

https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012331721524686853
https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012333771671134210
https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012333497929945095
https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012331895294693379
https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012335423769776130

https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012334079319134208
https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012333156018647040
https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012333367143133184
https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012519827720822784

https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012524464389656576
https://twitter.com/lildolewhip/status/1012527718607605761

And finally, here’s an impressive Mulaney re-enactment of Shakespeare’s Othello. This might as well happen:

(Via Anja Reese, True Virgo, Yikes On Bikes™, Vulture, James McKenna, Amanda Smith, and Liora Strong)

×