MAKE RANDOM RUMORS THAT ARE SO FALSE AND EASILY PROVEN WRONG ITS A CRIME TO KEEP THEM / EVERY SCHOOL KID / USE COMMON SENSE
A Distracted Boyfriend post.
You've been with the same phone provider for six years, and it has never once let you down. Then an advert for a new tariff appears on the bus, with a free streaming service thrown in. You are already looking at your own contract the way you'd look at an old sofa. Your sourdough starter, Doris, has been fed every day for a year. A friend mentions shop-bought focaccia, and suddenly Doris is in the fridge, unfed, wondering where it all went wrong. The group chat is deciding where to eat. Everyone has agreed on the Italian place that has been fine for a decade. Then someone posts a photo of a new ramen bar and the Italian is never mentioned again. You are three weeks into a perfectly good book. A friend lends you something with a shinier cover, and the first one goes on the shelf with the receipt still in it as a bookmark. **Why it caught on:** the picture is a stock photograph by the Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem, showing a man turning to look at another woman while his girlfriend looks on in disbelief. It became a meme in 2017, when Twitter and Reddit users began labelling the three figures as the thing you have, the thing you're tempted by, and the one who disapproves. It spread because the layout works for almost any temptation, from the trivial to the political, as the captions about geopolitics, conspiracy politics and bell ringing show.