Destructive meme:

While a somewhat old, or “dead” meme, this one is known as the “Overly Attached Girlfriend” meme. There are many versions of this image with different lines of text, all working off the same concept. The girl is overly attached, toxic, demanding, and always talking to the viewer as if they were her boyfriend. The picture in particular was likely used because she looks pretty psychotic in it, with wide eyes and open mouth.

This is an example of a socially destructive meme as it promotes toxic behavior in relationships. Social media as a whole has had a major impact on the function and health of relationships, especially with young people. The level of trust, respect, and loyalty that a relationship is meant to have is much harder to find in today’s world that it was in the past. While a result of several factors, I believe a major point of this is negative comparison. Young teenagers – who are very impressionable – will scroll through social media and compare themselves to every other person they see. This often leads them to believe they are less attractive, fit, wealthy, or overall valuable than those people. This can lead to a poor self-image and low confidence – so when they find themselves in a relationship and the partner does something slightly “wrong” or off, they freak out thinking they are betraying them. They don’t think themselves of being valuable, so they assume their partner is ditching them because they believe everyone else is better than themselves. The girl in this image assumes the boyfriend is cheating when he was only 3 minutes late. She automatically assumes she has been replaced – because she doesn’t see herself as being valuable.

Of course, there is two sides to every situation. Within today’s social media networks, it is easier than ever to cheat. Perhaps the guy did cheat, as all he had to do was DM some other girl on Instagram, spark up some conversation, and meet them in secret. Either way, social media has had extreme negative impact on the relationships of today.

Positive meme:

While this format is often used very differently than this – this recent meme I’ve seen on TikTok a lot lately is a nice example of a positive relationship. I’ve added the text to create a sort of ‘happy alternative’ to the negative meme. It can be assumed that the couple was together shortly before this – and the girl went home. He texts her, making sure she got home safe, and once she replies that she did, they exchange “goodnight”s and go to bed. It is irrelevant how long she took to get there; he doesn’t care. He just wanted to know that she got there. Just in this super simple and short scenario it can be seen that this relationship is much healthier, with all the trust and loyalty that is meant to be.