The Inexplicable Cultural Obsession With Legumes
Beans Meme refers to a summer 2018 phenomenon where beans—the food—became the focus of intense, absurdist internet humor. From movie theater incidents to car ownership, beans dominated jokes for weeks, representing internet culture’s ability to make anything temporarily fascinating through collective obsession.
Key Moments & Variations
“This N** Eating Beans” (July 2018)**: A viral tweet/screenshot described someone eating beans in a movie theater during Cars 2, spilling them everywhere. The image of beans in inappropriate contexts became comedy gold.
“Thinking About Those Beans” (July 2018): A teenager allegedly posted “I’m thinking about those beans” on Facebook 47 times over several years. The obsessive, cryptic posts became legendary.
“Rolling up to the function like” + car filled with beans: Photos of vehicles filled with cans of beans, people bathing in beans, beans in technology (computers, controllers), beans where beans shouldn’t be.
Why Beans?
The meme’s absurdity was the point—there was no logical reason for beans to be funny. The collective decision to make beans culturally relevant demonstrated internet culture’s power to manufacture meaning through sheer repetition and commitment.
Beans were mundane, cheap, unglamorous—the opposite of meme-worthy. That’s what made them perfect. The more seriously people treated bean content, the funnier it became.
Cultural Analysis
The beans meme exemplified “post-irony”—humor so layered in irony that sincerity became indistinguishable. Were people actually obsessed with beans? No. But the performance of bean obsession became real community bonding.
By September 2018, beans faded like all rapid-burn memes. But the phrase “thinking about those beans” remained—a way to express inexplicable, vague fixation on mundane things.
Sources:
- Know Your Meme: Beans Meme documentation
- The Daily Dot: “Why is the internet obsessed with beans?” (2018)
- Twitter archives (July-August 2018)