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There are two kinds of people: those that follow the outline and those that depart a the earliest opportunity. Peter Fenzel and Matt Wrather are the second kind. They set off to do one episode, but within the first 10 seconds Matt mentions the famous handshake meme from Predator, and it’s a whole other thing. That thing includes a hypotactical discussion of parataxis, which is why the Mr. Incredible meme is different from the Galaxy Brain meme, and why the Leonardo DiCaprio at the 2026 Oscars meme is different from the Orson Welles in Citizen Kane meme.

Of course this gets to a general typology of all human beings (different from the one in the first sentence of this description). Quite apart from whatever our memetic and linguistic metaphors may tell us from our future selves, it comes down to this: Some of us are adders, and some of us are subtractors.

If you’re starting to purge old belongings, and you end up having a conversation with your past self, say “hi” for us. Let ’em know it’s going to be OK.

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Further Reading

• The Handshake (YouTube)
• Memes
  • Epic Handshake
  • Woman Yelling at a Cat
  • Distracted Boyfriend
  • People Who Know
  • Galaxy Brain
  • IQ Bell Curve
  • Orson Welles Clapping
• “What is Syntaxis” (Language & Humanities)
• “Parataxis, Hypotaxis and other fun ways to help your writing do what you want” (Books around the Table)
• “Why There Are So Many Leonardo DiCaprio Drinking In Movies Memes?” (Screenrant)
• “A change of typeface: Microsoft’s new default font has arrived” (Microsoft.design)