Merge Media + Joker Minion, Pt I

Conversations on the SA forums are rarely simple or straight-forward, and today's Phriday is a great example of why we'd have it no other way. What begins as Wheel-of-Fortune-esque Before & After title mash-ups becomes something else entirely...

A simple enough premise from Swedish Thaumocracy back in December of 2019, even if their starter image is already three steps up the complication ladder. Whatever happened to starting simple!?

Armchair Calvinist leaves things open pretty well for Roseanne Barr to make a sequel.

I bought a lightning rod from Captain Hygiene, but that's just where the troubles started.

You mightn't happen to have a French-Fried Potater about you, now, would you Esplanade?

Tip imagines a world where Bill Murray has even more money and even more regrets.

How dare you itry? You've slandered two profound religious texts at once!

These two images from dudeness would fit into just about any Phriday ever published.

Armchair Calivinist provides this image just in time for the funeral of Guy Fieri. Or, birthday, whatever. A man can dream.

Mammal Sauce makes jokes that are way over my head.

itry made this image during six months in an isolation tank, and it was distributed for free after they died.

Galaxander's dance of joy is a disturbing spectacle through a FarSight rifle.

dudeness believes Wumpa fruit are a condition of our physical and social lives.

Heather Papps scanned the wrong Amiibo, but the results actually work pretty well.

As these images by itry demonstrate, goons are quick to bend a given thread's prompt into unrecognizable new shapes.

Bobby Digital, you didn't change the title for a title-swapping thread? What gives?

PopTartsNinja is so sneaky, I'm not sure if this is a 'shopped image or what the joke is!

We all just have to trust that Heather Papps gets all the jokes in this article, because I seriously can parse maybe half of them.

Okay Sourdough Sam, now we're clearly just fucking around. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you made this new for this thread. Don't make me regret it.

This image by nut is a good example of how a simple idea can become an impenetrable riddle in the hands of goons. Because actually working out the fonts for a "Charlie's Angels in the Outfield" poster would be hard, they instead opt to give the viewer as little help as possible, because they hate you.

Galaxander dares you to understand their jokes, you puny mortal!

Can you understand the jokes in these Pissed Ape Sexist images? If so please contact the Photoshop Phridays anonymous tipline, at...

Heather Papps said they curated the images for this Phriday but I think they just sent me the results of a randomized GIS just to fuck with me. And it's working.

Stex at least gives us a chance at understanding what they're talking about. But in the process, they set up a whole new avenue of this thing...

Heather Papps was initially publishing title mashup riddles meant to confuse me, but now...

Suddenly they're nodding to a unifying, goofy graphical element in more general media references. The game has changed entirely! The threads have collided!

Captain Hygiene suggests a remake Charlie Sheen would actually be appropriate for.

And just like that, cda takes us out of the original concept entirely and we are now just putting the Joker Minion into stuff. This is how SA works: if you don't get the joke, just wait a minute, the goons are incapable of staying on any one idea for very long.

cda either likes or vehemently hates movies, I'm not quite sure which.

Manifisto knows how these things are done. Classic fodder? Check. Flawless scaling and contrast effects? Also check. The little jacket sticking over the top of the counter and the hand on her shoulder, though, those extra touches are why they "win" this week's Phriday. Offwhite brushstrokes on teal undercoats, mmm mmm.

Vanisher deserves honorable mention (and possibly excommunication) for these efforts as well though.

Is Death Sext already referencing something else entirely with this motif? Of course! You didn't think things would stay understandable long, did you?

As we've seen today, the conversation on the SA forums moves fast, much faster than any puny mortal curation can possibly capture all the nuances of. A giddy romp through movie poster gag variant #3209 can, with the injection of the right WTF image soap-painted on a Canadian diner, turn on a dime to become some other joke entirely. Threads that appear at the same time sometimes merge, diverge, or become whole new concepts, as this one did. Next time we'll see where that concept goes in turn, with Joker Minion part II!

Thanks as always to Heather Papps for curation of these confusing-as-fuck images!

– Ian "BFM" Helm