Understandable, Have a Nice Day: The Viral Meme Explained (2024)

FAQs

Understandable, Have a Nice Day: The Viral Meme Explained? ›

This meme is usually set up so that one person asks for something and the other person denies their request for a silly or outrageous reason. The other person responds with the punchline, “Understandable, have a nice day,” accepting the situation no matter how crazy it is.

The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as an attempt to explain how aspects of culture replicate, mutate, and evolve (memetics). Emoticons are among the earliest examples of internet memes, specifically the smiley emoticon ":-)", introduced by Scott Fahlman in 1982.

Shaquille O'Neal, who is in a car, asks, “HELLO, FOOD?” Then, the worker at the window replies, “FOOD BROKE” to which comes the response, “UNDERSTANDABLE. HAVE A GREAT DAY”. This image was reposted to Tumblr on 28 February 2017. Subsequently, a meme revolving around the phrase “understandable, have a nice day” formed.

The expression What are those?! was entered on Urban Dictionary in October 2011, but it went viral in June 2015 when Instagram user @youngbusco posted a video of himself asking a police officer What are those?! about his basic black work boots.

meme \MEEM\ noun. 1 : an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture. 2 : an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media.

Memetic theory, or memetics, is a scientific field related to how units of information evolve and replicate. These units of information, called memes, undergo a process of natural selection comparable to that of genes.

Where does “Understandable, have a nice day” come from? This catchphrase comes from a meme of Shaquille O'Neal. This phrase originated from a grainy meme posted by @liltusk on Twitter (X) in 2017.

A common response to "have a great day" is "Thank you, you too!" or "Thanks, you too!" This is a polite and friendly way to acknowledge the well-wish and also express a similar sentiment in return. Great day to you too. Another great day to you.

used to say one hopes the person spoken to will have an enjoyable day.

A meme is a concept or idea that spreads virally from person to person. The most popular memes are usually found on the internet and may be images, videos, phrases, or hashtags. They often convey a humorous point of view, cultural reference, or satirical message.

Who owns a meme? ›

Copyright law gives original creators of memes, or the owners of the media used in the underlying meme, the exclusive rights of reproduction, modification, distribution, performance, and display.

Although Richard Dawkins invented the term meme and developed meme theory, he has not claimed that the idea was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past.

What is the origin of the term meme? The term meme was introduced in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. He conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and considered them as being in control of their own reproduction.

In French, the word “même” translates to “same” and the Greek word “mimoúmai” means “to imitate.” In his book, Dawkins said, “We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” He wanted to use a monosyllable that sounded like “gene.” Dawkins ...

The word, meme, pre-dates social media. The term was coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, in his 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene," and re-appropriated by the internet.

The picture on the right of the meme image is of a cat from Ottawa, Ontario, named Smudge, whom Miranda Stillabower owned since 2015. According to Stillabower, he was very antisocial around humans at home, and disliked not having a chair to sit on when relatives filled up space at the dinner table.

A meme (/miːm/; MEEM) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.