If folks on the internet aren’t getting their britches all in a knot over something, you can bet they’re having fun instead. Those are pretty much the only two options: outrage, or juvenile silliness.
And you know what? Thank goodness for the silliness. Life is hard enough without going online and finding out all the ways the world is messed up right now and having to argue about it. You’ve got to find the fun where you can.
One person out there found the fun in a visit to an aquarium.
And it wasn’t sharks or stingrays that got her attention, but a bright pink sea star showing off what appears to be a round, robust booty, the likes of which would do Sir Mix-A-Lot proud. Yeah, that fish got back.
This is the tweet that set the internet’s fun-seekers alight.
It’s easy to see where folks would want to get their fun on with this pic.
I mean, how often do you see such vibrant, colorful sea life that is clearly smuggling hams?
For most, the bright pink color of the sea star brought to mind one noteworthy example.
Of course, Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants was firmly at the top of people’s minds. How could he not be? It’s so obvious!
It only took meager Photoshop or MS Paint skills to get in on the fun.
Hey, the memes don’t have to be fancy to be effective, and these are definitely getting the job done.
If there’s too much Patrick in these memes for you, then you’re probably the only one.
They don’t get old, do they? That’s what happens when they’re absolutely on point.
Mind you, some serious folks did weigh in on @Babyshoujo’s tweet.
Nate Jaros, curator of fish and invertebrates at the Aquarium of the Pacific, where the photo was taken, told USA Today that sea stars don’t actually have butts, and what people are seeing as booties are just their arms.
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“In this photo, the sea star is on a vertical rock face with two of its arms holding the rock and two arms hanging in a relaxed position. Since the sea star is vertically oriented, gravity is causing its internal components to slump.”
So that’s the science for you.
Jaros and @Babyshoujo agreed on one thing in particular: that they had no idea this pic would garner such a reaction. When asked if he would have expected a pic like this to go viral, Jaros said simply, “We did not.”
And @Babyshoujo, answering some common questions, said that she thought maybe only two people would ever see her pic. She also apologized for “sexualizing starfish.”
And, given her sudden, unexpected virality, @Babyshoujo took the opportunity to plug some of her favorite charities.
Which seems like a thoroughly appropriate thing to do when your tweet gets more than 640,000 likes and almost 175,000 retweets out of the blue.
Just goes to show, there’s power in butts!
h/t USA Today