MY DOG ATE MY HOMEWORK / MY CAT ATE MY HOMEWORK / MY FISH ATE MY HOMEWORK / I ATE MY HOMEWORK
A Expanding Brain post.
The group chat settles on a restaurant after forty minutes. You suggest the one you've actually wanted to try, and the reply comes back at once: "we always go there." You go there. You order the usual. Your mate announces he's started "budgeting". Level one: he skips the morning coffee. Level two: he makes one at home. Level three: he has a spreadsheet. Level four: he's explaining the spreadsheet to you at the pub, on his third round. A project kicks off. First it's a to-do list, then a shared board, then a tracking tool with its own colour codes. By the final stage, nobody does the work, and everyone gives a very good update on the work. You buy a smart plug. Then a smart bulb, then a hub to talk to them. By the end you have shouted "turn off the lights" at the ceiling, three times, and walked across the room to use the switch. **Why it caught on:** the picture is a set of glowing brain illustrations, each one brighter and more elaborate than the last, usually stacked down the side of a blank template with a row for each caption. People fill the rows with ideas that grow more and more absurdly sophisticated, so the final brain is often the daftest. It spread because the format is endlessly flexible: anything can be ranked from basic to galactic, and the joke is usually that the grandest thinking is the silliest.