Contents on Twitter and on the Internet overall are mostly english contents, even in french communities. In particular with memes and other running jokes, for young french people who use to watch films or series in English, French is not really present and because of US influence English is more trendy for them.
However, talking about TV shows, Touche pas à mon poste (en) which is a very popular one for teenagers is a source of expressions for them. The presenter of this talk show has tunisian origins and he contributed to making expressions like darka, rassrah, bsahtek or a running joke like « tu sors ! » when someone is telling a bad joke. (french explanation : here and here)
NB: I’m not saying this TV show is either a good or a bad reference model for french teenagers and this debate might be off topic.
Most of the meme content in France is in English, but some people decided to make some french memes too.
They mostly come from jeuxvideo.com, which is a forum for young people that honestly can be compared to a cleaner 4chan.
For instance, they’re the ones who trolled Shia Laboeuf and it’s “He will not divide us” campaign
There isn’t much content of memes in france, but the most known ones coming from here would be El Risitas and some unflattering pictures of a politician called Henry de Lesquen (here are some memes)
Finally, as some French man who comes from all of those weird, random places of the Internet, in my opinion, I would say that when it comes to memes, French people are … Different than the rest of the world.
We don’t really create memes that are caption over pictures. We rather make very dumb twitter posts with generally crude language or insults/comparisons in it, to mock some situation or person.
If you want to grasp the concept of french memes, I highly advise you to lurk jeuxvideo.com, and the most known “memers” such as Valek (comes from JV.com).
I’m not sure that we can consider these as memes, but there’s a lot of phrases/expressions that come from movies or shows, for example :
-
C’est ballot, from the sketch La valise RTL of Jean-Marie Bigard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGpQTG6JIPg)
-
Bon mais admettons, from the sketch La chauve-souris, again of Jean-Marie Bigard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi7FTnxC78w)
-
Y en a qui ont essayé, ils ont eu des problèmes, from the sketch Le train pour pau, of Chevalier & Laspales (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7NB_RwtPx4)
-
J’ai fait la boulette, from the movie Le diner de cons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au0ZMqyoWwg)
-
On peut tromper 1000 fois 1000 personnes, mais on ne peut pas tromper 1000 fois 1000 personnes, from the movie La cité de la peur (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9k7Avk5jJE)
And more recently you have :
- AH !, said by Denis Brognart (https://www.youtube.com/watch?)v=Ri7GzCUTC5s)
- Oh ouais, ouais, ouais, said by Julien Lepers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4wlo77eJOE)
If you say one of these to a french person there’s a lot of chance that he recognises it.
Leave a comment