written by David Steffen
What Do You Meme is a 2017 meme-based competitive punchline card game by Fuckjerry. Each player is dealt a hand of cards, and then for each round an image from a meme is displayed for everyone and they have to pick the best caption for the image from their hand. One player acts as the judge in each round, picking their favorite caption for the image, and then the player who wins is the judge for the next round.
It’s basically an image-based version of Cards Against Humanity, where instead of the question cards there are image cards. Like Cards Against Humanity, it’s aimed at adult audiences, as there’s quite a bit of profanity and sex jokes and other things like that, so it’s not a game you’d want to play with someone who was easily offended or if you’d be embarrassed to read that kind of joke to them.
Audience
I wouldn’t play this with or around kids unless you want them to pick up some bad language that they might use at school. I would personally only try it with friends that I know well enough to know what offends them.
Challenge
I’s not really challenging, it’s basically competitive multiple-choice punchline choosing. There might be a tiny bit of strategy involved in trying to pick a punchline that would appeal to that particular judge, or trying to save a particularly funny answer card for the perfectly suited question card. There is a high element of chance in how good the cards you get are, sometimes I’ve had to sit on a dud for the whole game because it wasn’t funny and I didn’t want to waste a round playing it.A
Session Time
You could play as many or as few rounds as you want, so very customizable. You could play for 5 minutes or for hours if you have a group that’s enjoying it who don’t know the cards.
Replayability
Certainly some replayability, but if you play it too often the repetition of the cards, and the loss of the surprise-humor would make it less enjoyable. Which was true of Cards Against Humanity, but I think it’s even more true here, because the images will probably lose their humor more quickly, especially ones having to do with current politics.
Originality
Since it is basically Cards Against Humanity which in itself is basically “Apples To Apples for adults” the premise isn’t particularly original, though the individual writing for the cards (which is the highlight of the game anyway) is very original.
Overall
I’ve enjoyed playing this game a couple times with friends who I know well enough to not feel that I have to worry too much about them being offended. After a couple of rounds of it, the images are already getting kind of old, so I don’t feel like this game has a great deal of staying power. Overall it’s a fun game though, and can be a riot with the right group. You can find it at various retailers, the original and expansion packs for varying prices depending on the size of the pack and how new it is. There are also specific topic packs like a Game of Thrones meme pack.