If you drop too much online , you ’re probably intimate with the “ trouble boyfriend ” meme . It testify a man suss out out a char on the street while his partner look on in disgust . Meme makers typically put text edition on each of the three characters to foreground attention being give to something unimportant at the disbursal of something more valuable . The meme caught fervour last year , spawning thousandsof variations . But this “ meme ” is n’t so new . In fact , Charlie Chaplin had his own rendering of this bit almost a century ago .
Charlie Chaplin ’s 1922 short film “ Pay Day ” tells the account of a work guy ( his familiar Tramp fictitious character ) who ca n’t get a fracture . He works severely to make money , but it always seems to vanish , especially when he give-up the ghost home to his wife . There ’s one scenery in the film where Chaplin is leaving piece of work but his wife is following him , waiting to get some money . But Chaplin has no idea she ’s behind him .
Film author Peter Goldberg posted an look-alike of the setting to Twitterover the weekend , show Chaplin ’s wife catch him look at another adult female on the street . It ’s most identical to the distrait boyfriend meme .
One personreversed the imagehorizontally to make it more in - line with the Modern meme from the twenty-first hundred — but that ’s not entirely necessary .
There , fixed itpic.twitter.com/HYHAqp9aq9
— Tom Ryan ( @tomdryan)June 11 , 2018
Reversed or not , the discovery of the Chaplin version of the meme seems to be breathing novel life into the format . People are already making new jokes about silent movies and the innovation of the car , which work perfectly .
I am also sorry.pic.twitter.com/C0yHvr18ke
— Andy Fanton , 2024 Remaster ( @YourPalFanton)June 11 , 2018
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1006079221159137281
you could watch the entire filmon YouTubeif you ’re so inclined .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ast6629RiVg
But never bury the undecomposed edition of this meme — theEwok / Porgversion . It ’s really hard to beat .
Memes never truly die . They just evolve to the tip where nobody will understand them six calendar month from now . “ Distracted fellow ” seems to have tap into something universal , for undecomposed or for worse .
[ Peter Goldbergon Twitter ]
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