As someone who runs several large meme pages and has seen several thousands of funny images on the internet over the years, I can appreciate a company dipping their feet into meme waters. Appealing to a demographic you are not a part of can be quite the challenge. Arby’s creates incredible art of games/movies on their release days, and Wendy’s has savage replies on their Twitter. Slim Jim has now entered the fray, but their efforts are disappointing.

The humor being attempted here is a bit of a mixed bag. Using terms like “normie” and “long boi” is a bit outdated and of bad taste. Slim Jim is referring to their $1 long sticks of meat as “long bois”, something the millennial generation stopped saying regularly last year.

This meme also shirks the family-friendliness of the brand by insinuating the f-bomb in Grandma’s response for shock value. Worst of all, the “Skyrim level” meme died last year, as well. I don’t understand why the recipient of the texts is confused as to why Grandma used “LOL” in her text since it works in its context. Overall, this meme is cringe-worthy, and one in a long line of awful attempts.

The rest of the memes Slim Jim has posted have always included the numbers of 420 and 69. This would have been funny once, but it is getting beaten into the ground. This calls into question whether these memes are “so bad they’re good”. They teeter on the line of trying too hard, to the point that it is unclear, because they really don’t succeed at being either “So bad they’re good” or being a quality meme on the edge of trying too hard.

To bring into scope how bad these memes are, the page has 1.18 million likes, but these posts are garnering an average of ~100 reactions. That is a pitiful amount of reactions. To top it off, the comments are chock full of disdain, with several gifs of Christopher Walken’s “How do you do, fellow kids?” and pics of “Silence, brand.”

Overall, this is a disaster for the company and has resulted in hundreds of dislikes. Unfunny memes are not going to make any millennials go out to buy more “long bois.” I actually forgot I even had the Slim Jim page liked until this surge of sad attempts at meme culture. Worst of all, they are being sent out en masse, which is a poor social media strategy, as it greatly reduces the reach of each post. Maybe that’s for the best, as Slim Jim will need to work on their marketing a bit before they get me to buy more of their product.

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