Keep Calm and [get Raped]. - Will this fucking IRL meme die already?

[Tragi-Chan]

It’s an easily adaptable meme that can be used by the most unimaginative people. You own a book shop? “Keep Calm and Read Books.” You run a bar? “Keep Calm and Have a Beer.” You want to sell T-shirts to geeks? “Keep Calm and Expelliarmus.” As long as there are wankers who think they’re funny, this meme will not die.

 

[Salt Water Taffy]

It's particularly infuriating as a meme. Like, it was invented as a poster to use if the unthinkable happened, if Hitler broke Britain's navy and occupied the UK. As a meme, it's used by fat, entitled boomers and millennials, who have never and will never know real hardship, who will breakdown in tears if Starbucks doesn't get their diet mocha soy latte right, and who have been working for 80 years to dismantle the countries and freedoms that the people the poster was originally aimed at fought and died to protect.

Yeah, it's always been a very fatalistic meme despite the very happy-go-lucky crowd that likes to use it. It's got a very dark subtext that I guess a lot of the people using it don't realize or understand its gravitas. Compared to Rosie the Riveter - the other WWII poster that got popular decades after the fact - which despite the serious background that these women were working on war machines and the fate of the world as they knew it was at least slightly resting on their shoulders, at least has a very applicable "if we work together and all do our share we can make the world a better place" message that's at least optimistic, "Keep calm and carry on" is "things are going bad and they might be about to get much, much worse but please don't panic". The "keep calm and kill zombies" poster makes me think that the popularity of this meme might be tied to the recent surge in apocalyptic/dystopian media like The Walking Dead and The Hunger Games at least a little though. I'm a smidge surprised there isn't at least a little more backlash though because it is in proper context a very morbid meme. It's a step away from selling dog leashes with a Protect and Survive theme.