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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1044 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 23, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Obviously the whole "Amelia" meme is very culture war-loaded, but this jocular rundown of the whole thing (containing 100+ memes) made me laugh so much that it feels more appropriate for this thread. (It caught my attention because Scott liked it.)

I was a bit obsessive in the weekly thread but I am genuinely enjoying the meme. There are a lot of low-quality versions of it, but where it works, the 'joke' is the simple idea of being proud of one's own country. I criticised the Huff AI slop ones, but there is a part of my soul that is moved by this one, and it's AI-gen slop too. Maybe it's just that Shakespeare's words are doing all the heavy lifting.

Still, regardless of origin, I enjoy the whole thing as a reminder of one important trait of patriotism.

It's fun.

It is genuinely fun and uplifting to feel part of and believe in something larger than yourself, and to identify with a place and a heritage, and it's a type of pleasure that people from middle-class liberal cosmopolitan backgrounds like myself are trained not to feel. So allowing myself the space to read the This England speech and enjoy the feeling of loving something in my own heritage, without a trace of irony, feels somewhat transgressive.

The worse Amelia memes, at least for me, are the ones that are just focused on this or that bad thing. Bad things are bad, and should be opposed, but if hatred is the only emotional tenor of a movement, it won't land with me. There's plenty of media that just serves up outrage or panic or whatever else, and none of that finds fertile soil in my heart. But for something to say, with plain sincerity, "This thing that you and I belong to is good and beautiful", is unavoidably moving.

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