A Ranking Of Simpsons Memes That Feature Raymond J. Johnson

[Haschel Cedricson]

Editor's Note: This thread originally appeared on Something Awful. I wanted to share it with some people in the Discord, but the SA paywall is currently up. Therefore, I'm recreating it here. Incidentally, if you see this face, that's my avatar over on SA. Other people turned it into a meme over there so you'll see it crop up occasionally.

Over the last two years, I have been making Simpsons memes about Raymond J. Johnson Jr. both on SomethingAwful and on the Bortposting group on Facebook. Recently I posted my 100th meme, and now I'm going to go back through the archives and rank them all. I have done this by using a program similar to this one that ranks Pokemon.

Not all of these are going to be winners, especially near the beginning. But I had a lot of fun, and although it took a while eventually a lot of other people did too. Anyway, I have 100 of these things for this thread so let's get started.

100)

My least favorite. It was a lazy meme template, posted in the middle of one of those derails where goons run lazy templates into the ground. To top it all off, I have grown to love Raymond J. Johnson Jr and he does not deserve to be compared to 2020.

99)

Some of these memes were made by hitting the Random Scene button on Frinkiac and trying to turn it into a Ray Jay meme. It didn't always work out; the joke I was going for wasn't a good joke in the first place, and I still managed to make it clunky anyway.

98

While most memes stand on their own, this one was crafted in response to somebody telling me they liked my idea of making Olympics-related Simpsons memes because it meant that I'd "only be posting once every four years". As such, I punished them with this meme that 1) wasn't funny, 2) was from a newer episode from a season that sucked, and 3) was a Winter Olympics sport which meant that their every four years crack should have been every two years. It was okay at the time but it had the shelf life of warm yogurt.

97

This one was Facebook-only until now so that's why my real face is in it. Somebody said I was a menace for posting so many RJJ memes, so I whipped this up a few seconds later. Not much to say about it.

96

Simpsons memes thrive on combinatory value. To me, this means that the meme should ideally be a synthesis of multiple things. Here I had the ingredients but they didn't get stirred; the joke in the meme is basically the same joke as the original.

The next five will also be rough but then we will pick up steam, I promise.

[Haschel Cedricson]

95

I'd like to talk about Facebook photo cropping for a moment. A single panel from Frinkiac is 640 x 480 pixels. A two-panel meme is 640 x 960. When posted on Facebook, a two-panel meme will show up perfectly. If the meme is three panels, 640 x 1440, then Facebook will show the first two panels like normal but the third panel will require people to click on the image to see the whole thing. This leads to a lot of memes on FB where the surprise of discovering something unexpected in the third panel is part of the joke.

Although usually these memes have the author say "Three panels" in the description to make sure people click through, a lot of times people may think a three-panel meme on FB is just a two-panel meme without a punchline. And if the second panel also contains a joke, then readers may assume they have seen the full meme and not explore further.

So with this meme, I was originally going to have a third panel where the smiling Apu and Sanjay in the audience was replaced with my face. However, I was worried that since Facebook cropping would just show RJJ and Krusty it wasn't that big of a deal. In retrospect I wish I had done it anyway; it would have strengthened the joke.

At any rate, I've fallen in love with the four-panel 2x2 meme. Those are 1280 x 960, but get autoscaled so Facebook shows the entire meme.

94

While RJJ memes eventually gained fans, poster Rarity has long been on record as not liking them. I think I made this during a stretch where she was particularly vocal about being fed up.

This is our list's first mention of Ray Romano, but it will not be the last.

93

For a while there was a meme where people would invert the colors on a photo of a person, say it was Evil ______, and then reveal that the evil version of the person was the opposite of how the person normally behaved. It was not a long-lived meme but I made sure I caught the wave while it was there.

92

The other big meme trend I brought to the Simpsons thread was Hamiltonposting. Is Hamilton overrated? Of course. Can the memes be funny? Absolutely. Did goons like them? Absolutely not.

Every now and then a TV show or video game or anime will start a flood of memes in the thread. I forget which trend was monopolizing the discussion, but it prompted somebody to lament that they would "rather have Hamiltonposting than this." Immediately, like, in the very next post I posted this meme that combined two trends that were not well-liked at the time.

I believe the disbelief in how quickly I was able to summon a Hamilton+RJJ meme caused me to be described as "the thread's Osama bin Laden: Brilliant in the execution of a terrible idea."

91

The second RJJ meme ever! The first one (which we will see later) was designed around taking two mentions of Raymond J. Johnson on the show and merging them into one scene. The second one attempted to expand the joke even further by taking something external to the Simpsons and bringing it into the show.

And yes, it's hard to remember but President Trump thought bleach and lights would help fight covid, and we all were indeed sick of him already.

[Haschel Cedricson]

90

I like the concept behind the joke here. I wish I could have executed it a little better because "Mr. Johnson?" is clunkier than just "Johnson" would have been and it could be read to imply that he's talking directly to RJJ in the background there. However, a lot of goon parodies are terrible with meter and scansion and for me it was important that the end of the poem match the stress pattern of "Donna Dixon".

89

I have no idea why I thought of this one.

88

On it's own it's not much, but this was posted as a response to a fantastic meme by loquacius. Seriously, go check it out.

87

The episode where everybody thought Homer was making up his contractor friend played by Ray Romano wasn't a great one, but it did feature a scene where Homer tried to convince everybody that Ray actually existed. Since Homer's first mention of RJJ is explaining to Lisa who he is, it felt natural to mash up those two scenes.

86

Early in my Johnsonposting career I could tell it wasn't very popular and I promised people that I would take a break. Then I literally saw a news headline about Branson. When life hand-delivers a golden opportunity to you, you have to take it, right? Incidentally, please do not call it Chinese.

[Haschel Cedricson]

85

What I like about this meme is that it doesn't just involve RJJ telling people his name; it also encapsulates the part of his act where oftentimes the character wasn't supposed to be there, he would just barge in unwanted and force everybody to deal with his presence. Honestly, this is also a metaphor for RJJ memes in the Simpsons thread.

84

Periodically when posting these memes somebody who is unfamiliar with the character will ask who he is and why he is supposed to be funny. Normally after seeing some videos and reading about him they end up with the first question answered and the second question even more confusing to the point where they regret ever trying to learn more in the first place.

83

The idea behind this one was me asking myself "Why doesn't he like to be called Johnson? What if it isn't actually his real name?" And once I had that idea, the obvious answer was that somebody else was the real Johnson.

I remember the first time I ever encountered Big Johnson t-shirts. My family was on vacation and there was a t-shirt store that had a ton of them hanging up. I was in 8th grade so naturally I thought they were hilarious. Then my dad walked up to ask what I was doing and I pretended I was actually looking at some different t-shirts and then we never talked about it again.

82

Every now and then on Facebook somebody will make a meme where the joke is that one of the panels is recreated in MSPaint. I made this one as a comment reply to one where the meme asked everybody to MSPaint their own Simpsons meme. I'm no artist but all in all I'm happy with how this turned out.

81

Part of the fun of making RJJ memes is playing with the formula. On the surface it's the same joke over and over, but there are different ways to tell it. "He keeps repeating his name", and "He is angry at being called Johnson" are the big ones, but it's enjoyable to tinker with those. What if he didn't want to be called

RAY

? What if he had another name entirely?

I chose "Ramon J. Juanson" to match the original scenes "Miguel Sanchez". It makes this joke better on its own, but I rated the meme lower than it could have been because I have another meme that uses the name and it's near the top of the list.

[Haschel Cedricson]

80

Technically this one is only a Simpsons meme in the sense that Raymond J. Johnson's face is the Simpsons version instead of an actual picture of Bill Saluga. However, I like this one anyway. And honestly, the J.O.H.N.S.O.N. system tells you everything you need to know.

79

A common comment when I post these on Facebook is "That was funny for about three seconds!" This meme is from earlier in the thread where it was obvious I had already posted a bunch of RJJ memes, but it wasn't quite clear if I was going to keep on doing it. I like to imagine meta memes like this one kept the thread on their collective toes.

78

The concept for this was just searching Frinkiac for "Johnson". This meme has two interesting things about it. First, this was the first meme that made somebody ask for an in-depth explanation on why RJJ was funny. Second, this is the first time I removed Ray's hat in favor of the hat being worn by the original character in the scene.

77

Ray Romano returns! I made this one because I couldn't get the phrase "You mean there's a better Ray?" out of my head. I figured I had to compare their net worth to get an objective measure of who was the "better" Ray. A side effect of that is that the act of juicing an orange against one's face becomes completely irrelevant to the meme. To me that's an added funny bonus, although if you feel it's sloppy meme-making I can't in good faith argue against the point.

76

Normally when I try to expand from #Johnsonposting to #Bransonposting my go-to is Charlie Callas, but Yakov worked as a much better Dr. Nick stand-in. I believe Jose almost put me on probation for this one.

[Haschel Cedricson]

75

Speaking of Charlie Callas, here he is! Even the RJJ-haters can't claim that Raymond J. Johnson was the worst comedian in the 70s because Charlie Callas exists. Check out this terrible routine; I dare anybody to tell me it's funny. At any rate, Charlie Callas makes a good scene partner for RJJ. Interestingly enough, this is actually more of a Callas meme than a Johnson meme, but Two Spaghetti Meals is a great scene and I wanted to add a little Branson flair.

74

And here's the whole Branson gang!

Fun fact: Yakov Smirnoff's face is cut off by the edge of the TV because in the Branson episode there are no frames of him making a negative face, or even one that can be interpreted as negative like the one of Charlie Callas making his sounds.

73]

For this one I wanted to highlight the disconnect between how older audiences laughed at RJJ's act and how younger audiences tend to be bewildered.

72

I really like the joke here. This was back before I had discovered the 2x2 four-panel, though, and so the middle panel has dialog from both RJJ and the clerk. I tried to differentiate the two by having one at the top and the other at the bottom, but unfortunately I forgot to make sure that RJJ's mouth was also open so it looks like the clerk is saying both things. I kind of wish I could redo this one because other than that I think it's a good concept.

71

Normally I try to avoid memes where one character turns into another or there's a faceswap. There's nothing wrong with those memes and a lot of deserving classics like You Got The Dud and Lemonposting rely on it, but it's not a direction I usually go. When I made this one, people were starting to get tired of Johnsonposting and so I wanted to have the sudden swerve in the last panel. This is also the first meme that I focus-grouped before posting, as I wasn't sure if "fey" would be taken as derogatory or not. The overwhelming consensus was that my LGBT friends were not bothered by it and the rest is history.

Shortly after posting this meme, Jose threatened that anybody posting a Raymond J. Johnson Jr meme would be probated unless it was "at least as funny as this one". So there you have it, everything after this meme in the thread is officially Jose-approved!

[Haschel Cedricson]

70

I love this one. It's so simple, it's so stupid, but it just works perfectly. This was actually inspired by two memes made by other people. The first one was this one from Drink-Mix Man which uses the same scene:


The other one was a personal favorite RJJ meme that was created by pitch a fitness. The placement of Flanders in the original scene reminded me of this layout.



To me this represents the best parts of meme culture. It never bothers me when two people riff on the same scene, or tell the same joke in two different ways. Part of the fun is both seeing where you can find inspiration and seeing what you can inspire in others.

69

I remember being told that this meme "made no sense" when I first posted it. I disagree. This meme is a glimpse into an alternate world where RJJ didn't have the self-confidence to tell people all of the things that they could call him. Instead, he collapses into a breakdown, hiding from a child. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

68

A joke I really like dragged down by what is in retrospect a superfluous final panel. Talking doll jokes are always good, and even the most ardent Ray Jay haters would probably prefer being told to call him Ray than the alternative of RJJ flirting.

The choice of facial expression was deliberate here; I also wanted to conjure up the mood of the talking Al Gore doll.

67

Is this self-indulgent? Yeah. I don't care, though; I made this early in the initial RJJ backlash and it made me laugh.

66

Here it is! This is the Very First Raymond J. Johnson Jr. meme! The thought process behind it was simple - take something that is mentioned in the dialog of Scene A, find that something physically shown in Scene B, and combine the two. I have no idea why I originally thought of this scene and the revue in Branson. I certainly had no idea that I would make so many more of these. It certainly has been an amazing ride.

As for the meme itself, I stand by it as a decent meme. Probably could have cropped better, but all in all the meme is a textbook merger of two scenes and I think it stands alone even outside the context of Johnsonposting.

[Haschel Cedricson]

65

This scene felt custom-made for a Ray Jay meme; not only is Skinner's description of what the group needs a dead ringer for how most people experience the Johnson routine, Chief Wiggum inserting himself into the group unwanted is a great parallel to Ray Jay.

Here I experimented a bit with skewing Ray's face order to match the perspective. It didn't turn out as well as I was hoping it would, but I think part of that is that Chief Wiggum is one of the more difficult characters to put RJJ's head onto - Wiggum has no neck so making the head fit onto the collar of the clothes is surprisingly difficult. Other hard characters include Moleman (also no neck), Milhouse (head is surprisingly large compared to his body), and of course Marge (have to redraw the background behind the hair).

64

The "Do It For Her" meme is one of my favorites, and I've seen some fantastic takes on it. Here my original idea actually wasn't an RJJ meme! I wanted to make a meme where instead of spelling something clever with the letters in the poster the joke was just that a single picture blocked out one word. Then I thought of blocking out "Johnson" and made this.

63

This meme was actually made thanks to a friend who messaged me on Discord and said ""someone compared latin books in the 1500s to an at-era simpsons meme so my next challenge to you is a latin simpsons meme". I'm fairly sure he didn't expect me to actually do it, but 10 minutes later I had this ready for him.

Interestingly enough, while I have this ranked down at 63, this is probably Top Ten in terms of reactions on Facebook. I wonder if Uncle Wemus has any thoughts on the different attitudes between our thread here and the Bortposting group.

62

I got the idea for this meme a long time ago, when I only had about fifty memes made. I've been sitting on it for a long time and it was so exciting to get to actually post it. The original scene is one of my favorites - the buildup of the two keys, the solemn attitude and reverence for a complete wet fart of a ceremony - it's beautiful juxtaposition. And much like a perfect game in bowling isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, neither is making 100 memes. However, it's human nature to celebrate these small victories.

There were actually two versions of this meme made; one has my SA avatar and the other has my Facebook profile pic. It was important to me that both audiences immediately recognize the joke as easily as possible.

61

Shortly after I posted the Latin meme above, I got the idea for an even better final panel. The jokes are different enough that I count them as two memes.

[Haschel Cedricson]

60

The initial dialogue in this scene is Homer saying "He's Bart" and pointing at Bart. Originally I considered having Homer point to Ray, say "He's Ray," and then have the third panel be Ray/Bart continuing the scene. This felt awkward to me, though, and there was a disconnect between Homer being the one not giving Wiggum a bribe and then all of a sudden Ray is getting electrocuted?

It's always a tough decision when making memes deciding on how accurately to adhere to the original text. Some memes require following the format verbatim. Others, like this meme, allow you to play with it a little bit.

59

The big thing I love about this meme is the effort-to-payoff ratio. On the surface this looks like it took literally no effort at all. And yet behind the scenes I did the legwork to research what the Download A Car font was and install it on my computer. Will I ever use that font again? Probably not. But I have it now, just in case!

58

One of the earlier memes I made, and one that I didn't mind seeing Harrisoned because it's a good joke. I think it works better referencing RJJ's schtick without having him be in the scene himself than it would had he been at the table.

57

In my opinion this one was underrated compared to the reactions it got here and on Facebook. The concept was originally a simple one, instead of JAY Sherman the film critic is Ray JAY. Pretty simple. However, I decided to switch things up by not including any of the classic RJJ tropes and I love the results. The grin in panel 3 giving way to a somber, reflective panel 4 cracks me up, and even though he's not telling us what to call him, he can't help but review a movie that asks the viewer what to call one of the characters. This is an "Aha" instead of "Haha" meme, and I make no apologies for it.

56

My only regret here is not using a true monospace font. I forget why I didn't; I think Courier/Courier New both looked too much like they were added in by a computer and I just sort of stopped looking. Nevertheless, I enjoy that the meme is told half through RJJ talking and half through the memoirs.

Incidentally, the stack of papers on the desk implies that he's written a LOT about his name, much more than we usually hear from him. I for one want to read those memoirs.

[Haschel Cedricson]

55

Remember what I was saying about Milhouse? Here's where it came into play. I'd been wanting to do a Linguo/RJJ mashup for a while but I wasn't sure how to do it. Then I had the idea of there being two Johnsons. In the end I settled on this and I love the results. The first two panels clearly telegraph that somebody else will also share his name, and then we have the swerve where it turns into a Linguo meme out of nowhere. Sometimes cramming too many ideas into a meme ruins it, but I think Linguo is just out-of-left-field enough that he really works here.

54

There's only one thing that bothers me about this meme and it's not something I could have really fixed. I mentioned earlier how putting even a tiny bit of effort into a meme boosts its potential, and part of that in general is choosing frames. When picking a scene from Frinkiac, it's important to make sure that the character you want speaking has an open mouth, and if it's a multi-panel meme you want to pick different frames for each instead of copy-pasting one frame multiple times - even if the frames are similar.

Here frames 1 and 3 ARE different frames, but the only difference in the originals is Skinner's facial expression and I pasted over those so it looks like I was just lazy. I don't blame the animators for not thinking about how people would be meming years in the future, but it is unfortunate.

53

This scene feels custom-made for Johnsonposting, and indeed I've seen a few goons make some similar jokes. I don't know if "Chardonnay" is as ridiculous a rhyme as the original's "Montessori" but it works for me.

52

If I was ranking these on how stupid they are, this would be Number One. For those of you who missed this one, a Twitter account ran by a member of the Taliban posted a Sneed's Feed And Seed meme. Somebody joked that if Taliban shitposters saw my memes they would surrender. So I whipped this up in like 15 minutes. Later my 7-year-old daughter asked me not to tweet it directly at the Taliban so they wouldn't "get mad and attack our area".

Nothing in the above paragraph is a joke.

51

RJJ doesn't have to be in a meme in order for it to count as Johnsonposting; for this one I wanted an excuse to use the "Mr. Scorpion" line. I probably didn't

need

to give him the hat, but when possible I like to avoid using an unaltered Frinkiac shot as the entire meme.

[Haschel Cedricson]

50

The line about not being washed up is an underrated one but I don't get much of a chance to use it. This meme got virtually no reaction when I posted it, which is a shame because it's different from the standard RJJ fare.

49

I sort of wish the names "Hans" and "Franz" weren't so associated with SNL, but I needed a name that rhymes with Hans. Changing RJJ's name to something related to the original scene usually has good results, and this time was no exception.

I have a file with a bunch of RJJ heads, but naturally since he was only physically in one scene there are only so many options. For this meme I actually edited his pupils to make it clear that he's looking down. Most people probably didn't notice, but I promise you that the difference between the pre-edited eyes and the final meme is surprisingly large.

48

With a name like Johnson, the occasional dick joke is inevitable. And even though the "Now I know why they call you Miss Hoover" scene is terrible even relative to the quality of late-era Simpsons, the combinatory value was too strong and I pretty much had to make this as soon as I got the idea.

Since this episode is not on Frinkiac I was unable to find a quality still that had Bart speaking, so I settled for flipping his mouth upside-down to make a frown.

47

A simple joke, but an effective one. I've noticed that RJJ works very well with Ned Flanders, either as a replacement or as a scene partner. The former is because Ned has his trademark speech patterns that can easily become a Ray-Jay Monologue, and the latter because Homer-Ned interactions frequently revolve around the tension that comes from an oblivious character bugging the hell out of another for no reason other than existing.

46

It doesn't happen very often, but occasionally I will get the idea for a Johnsonpost and literally giggle out loud until I can get to my computer to make it. This was one of those.

Hard Drive had a hilarious article called $300 Editing Software Purchased to Make Simpsons Shitposts. While I didn't buy any software, I absolutely taught myself how to use the alignment tool in Gimp in order to get the panels to line up. I also spent more time than I probably needed to coming up with even more names since I didn't want to repeat any until the frames got too small to read. Here's a large version of the lower-right panel:


If you can't read those, the names are
RJJ Junior
Junior
Raymond Jay
Saluga
Raymundo
Ray Junior
Raaaaaaay
Jay Jr
RJ Jr
Raymond J. Johnson Jr
RJ^2
Arjay
R. J. Johnny
Raymie Jay
Ray Ray Bo Bay Banana Fana Fo Fay
The Rayster

[Haschel Cedricson]

45

Another one that breaks with the formula! I remember I wanted to do another meme focusing on the line "washed up", but the only other scene that uses that exact phrasing is the Simpson's Bible Stories episode where Bart describes himself as washed up before Ralph goes off to fight Goliath. So I started trying to think of scenes where somebody is literally washing and came up with this one. I think it works well; saving the reveal for the last panel is good timing.

This is one of three memes where RJJ is topless, by the way.

44

This meme might actually be the most important RJJ meme I've ever made. Before this meme whenever I needed a face I would either open one of two earlier memes and copy the layer, or if I needed a different expression I would crop out the face from Frinkiac and then not save it because I was lazy. This meme required as many RJJ faces as possible, though, and this is the moment where I consolidated all of the RJJ faces into a single archive.

For this meme I focus-grouped it with the Bortposting Discord to determine if it was funnier to change RJJ's skin tone to match the minorities in the audience or if I should just change the color of their hands to match RJJ's face. We decided changing the face was funnier and I agree it's a much stronger final product.

43

I like this one because it flips the formula and then nudges the 4th wall without actually breaking it. I'm not sure how many people noticed this, but I added the "Welcome To Branson" sign made out of mashed potatoes as a little easter egg.

42

I spent part of my 35th birthday making this one; my wife came home with cake and ice cream and the ice cream gave me inspiration. This one took a bit more effort than I was used to because of all those goddamn ice cream cartons but I think it was worth it.

I was reluctant to use "You Can Call Me Grape" because grape isn't a common flavor of ice cream. In the end it was too good of a pun to pass up, though.

41

I forget why I came up with this idea but I love how it implies a backstory that we will never learn. Looking back I was a little sloppy with his eyes in the second panel, but all in all I love how he looks like he's genuinely reflecting on his Italian-accented inner child.

[Haschel Cedricson]

Sorry about the delay; I was travelling for work last week!

40

This is a special meme because before this meme I used Frinkiac to do all of my text. Here I thought of the joke, but I couldn't think of a way to pull it off since Frinkiac only allows you to use capital letters. After trying a few rough drafts that didn't land, I bit the bullet and downloaded the Akbar font. That decision helped a lot of memes in the future - even if you don't need capital letters it makes it easier to photoshop elements of the scene that would normally be behind the text.

I love that an upside-down "J" becomes an "r". Kind of a nice little easter egg that I didn't actually plan or have anything to do with.

39

Here's our second topless RJJ meme! I think he's looking pretty good for being a 70s comedian, don't you?
Most of the panels here don't have anything to do with the punchline of "Raywatch", but I don't care. The entire thing was just an excuse to photoshop RJJ's face onto the Speedo man. #NoRegrets

38

I worried a bit about this one because it features Carl calling him Johnson directly without him going into his routine, but I felt that the joke was strong enough that you would all forgive me. I had the idea for this meme several months ago but I delayed on posting it because I had the idea for the 100th-Meme-Special at the same time and wanted them to be back-to-back.

37

I freely admit this one was nothing but a giant troll to the thread; once again people were making fun of Hamiltonposting and instead of synthesizing them immediately like I did in the 92nd-ranked meme, I decided to go for the bait-and-switch. Those of you who know Hamilton may have noticed I changed Smithers saying "You know his name" to "What's your name, man?" in order to keep up the Hamilton ruse.

36

Another guest appearance of Ray Romano, along with the tried-and-true comedy of changing "gay" to "Ray". The more I look at this the more I love it; Marge and her sisters have perfect expressions of horror and I just love the stupidity of needing to ask a Hollywood expert which people are named Ray. The original draft had an extra panel in the middle of Homer feeing Johnson's name to Jay Sherman, but it got axed because I not only didn't want to make a five-panel meme but I was in the middle of a noticeable attempt to improve my comedic timing.

[Haschel Cedricson]

35

It's hard to tell which scenes will become memes and which ones won't. Missionary Impossible isn't an all-time classic episode but it certainly has a bunch of good lines, and the confusion over the value of an ace in blackjack is one of my favorites. I certainly think that scene would have combinatory value with a bunch of other memes, but alas, I never see it.

For this specific meme it was a deliberate choice to replace the ace with the Jack of Hearts. Not only did I need a face card, I wanted the double meaning of the "J" and a subliminal message of love for Raymond J. Johnson, Jr.

34

This was a fun one. I bailed on changing the poster in the lower right corner of the wall because I didn't want to deal with the text, but RJJ works well as an old-timey boxer. I could have used a few more panels, but the pacing fit better limiting it to just four.

33

This one is really only funny to the Bortposting group on Facebook. Most people submit their memes and they sit in pending until one of the page admins approves their post. People who have a consistent history of posting decent-quality memes and not breaking the rules can occasionally get granted post approval, which lets them skip the queue. One day the admins put out an offer to give approval to anybody who met the requirements and I asked for it.

At the time I planned to keep that promise. I

really

did.

32

This meme got virtually no reaction either here or on Facebook, which is a shame because I am a sucker for jokes about Mark Russell (or Tom Lehrer, the thinking man's Mark Russell).

31

I was a little nervous about making this one because the first panel is pretty dense in dialog. But honestly, way too much dialog is the entire point of the RJJ experience, isn't it? The original line is a masterful delivery by Dan Castellaneta in conveying disappointment, and I can hear Bill Saluga delivering this line with the exact same pathos and I love it.

[Haschel Cedricson]

30

Here's another 4th-wall breaker! When I started making RJJ memes, I didn't expect that my avatar would become a meme for the thread. Sometimes the memes other people make are flattering and sometimes they are insulting but I always appreciate them. Including myself in these memes can feel like I'm being attention-seeking, but the idea of me being the stagehand accidentally wandering into the shot felt appropriate. Once I had that, Lisa's dialog wrote itself.

29

A simple joke, and yet a perfect one. The exasperation from the agents, the implication that they have been trying to call him Johnson all day, the punchiness of a two-panel meme - it's perfect.

28

What I love about this one is that it easily could have stood on its own with just the first four panels, but then the final panel adds a second joke to the scene. There is a ton of focus on the rest of RJJ's monologue, but the use of "doesn't has" instead of "don't have" doesn't get comment on very often and I think that while it's not crucial to the routine, it's like a seasoning that finishes the flavor of the meal. Anyway, I admire the animators in this scene for conveying so much emotion using nothing but Homer's brow.

27

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of early RJJ memes were written by searching Frinkiac for "Ray" and seeing what I could do. I almost gave up on turning this mention into a meme, until the line "Don't blame me, I voted for Callas" popped into my head. This meme didn't get a ton of traction when it was first posted, probably because Charlie Callas was even more obscure than Raymond J. Johnson Jr. It's a meme I enjoyed making, though, and it is responsible for inspiring future memes that branched out into the Branson Meme Extended Universe.

26

When the Faceswap Punchline lands, it

really

lands.

[Haschel Cedricson]

25

Another successful meme involving a Flanders scene. Ned and Ray both have similar energy, not just in their speech pattern but in their inability to recognize that nobody around them is enjoying their rambling. RJJ also works well as a mental patient.

24

This was a FB-only meme. Although I'm posting them all in-line here, the original meme as presented relied on each panel being submitted as their own image. That meant instead of seeing all of the pictures at once, viewers had to manually click to the next panel like a slideshow.

I'm a big fan of slideshow memes even though they really can only exist on Facebook. Depending on how many panels you have the continual advancing can become part of the joke itself, and halfway through the viewer tries to predict what the final panel will be. Sometimes they are surprised and that's funny, and other times it's exactly what they suspect but they went on the journey anyway and that's funny too.

23

Switching the clerk from asking about his first name to his last name is natural. What I really like about this one is that, unlike Homer not knowing Mr. Burns's first name, RJJ is perfectly aware of what his last name is and could have gotten the letter with absolutely no issues whatsoever.

22

For this meme I could have added another panel of Poochie/Ray telling him his name, but I deliberately cut it off at three because I wanted the reader to fill in the blanks. Sure, he probably just did his normal monologue but there's also a chance that he performed a rap song introducing himself. That song is something that I both love to imagine and have no desire to actually write.

21

Objectively this shouldn't be so high on the list. But as a rebuttal to the many people who have asked me to stop with this insane project it works perfectly. I can't help but smile every time I see it, and since rankings are subjective I'm using my ranker's prerogative to rate this one highly. No regrets.

[Haschel Cedricson]

20

James Woods is quite the conundrum because, while by all accounts he is a rightwing chud garbage person, he is undeniably a talented actor and his guest spot in this episode is arguably a top-ten guest star appearance. For this particular meme I wanted to keep that intensity, and having Jimbo be confused not about who he is but about who Johnson is was a good way to do that.

An original draft had Jimbo also being able to be called J, but I didn't want to muddy the waters.

19

I actually remember the exact meme that gave me the inspiration for this one. Bart had been replaced with Kirk Van Houten, and the speech bubble made the cracker factory boss look like he was saying "Good Luck". The meme didn't need the "I don't remember saying that!" line, even though that's a great line; the punchline was left to the reader to supply on their own and the meme was stronger for it. So too did I want to riff on that format.

18

I don't have too much to say about this one except that I have seen somebody recreate a similar meme as a Harrison and it made me feel good.

17

Here's another meme format I would like to see more often, with the escalator showing different follies revealed in the third panel. As I've expressed in this thread I don't believe that RJJ's routine doesn't go anywhere; people only believe it does because they don't encounter him outside of people quoting "You can call me Ray..." divorced of his usual context. But sure, if he's a double act without a partner then it certainly seems like his routine doesn't go anywhere, and that's the loving jab I was making at RJJ here.

16

My only regret about this one was that I couldn't make it in four panels, other than that it's perfect. I felt it was necessary to get the whole "You can give her this, and you can give her this, and then you can give her these," in order to keep the pacing of the meme. This meme did introduce some difficulties; RJJ's face in panel four comes from when he is still walking out of the coffin in Branson and so the source art is smaller than the rest of my RJJ heads. Nevertheless, I'm very pleased with how it turned out in the end.

[Haschel Cedricson]

15

In between Johnsonposting and Hamiltonposting, I briefly tried to make Chalmers and Skinner performing Who's On First into a thing. This was my attempt to synthesize the two. I think Chalmers plays off RJJ well here, and as he leaves RJJ looks almost contemplative about ruining the act. That's pathos right there.

14

Inspiration for this meme came from double-checking to see if there were any more useful frames of RJJ's face that I hadn't used yet. Most of them weren't different enough from existing heads I already had, but this front angle captured in the middle of his head turn was perfect for being placed onto a deformed balloon.

Technically this meme doesn't *need* the small text in the corner of the last panel but I think the effect made by having it just slightly getting cropped by the frame elevate this meme from an A- to a solid A.

13

This meme has it all - a dick joke, a meta reference, and technically a new character! Since nobody in this meme was named Ray, I cropped the glasses off of Hugh Jass. I was worried that the result would look too different from the Raymond J. Johnson we know and love, but in the end it worked perfectly.

12

Some memes hold a special place in my heart, and this is one of them. Doggles posted a version of this meme with just the caption; the porch still had all of Cletus's kids on it. He said "Someone with better editing skills than me please erase the kids and replace them with a single Johnson." I was only too happy to oblige. This meme marks the first time when I felt the community was starting to genuinely warm up to RJJ memes.

11

I had the basic idea for this meme for a long time, where I would make the giant letters spelling "RJJ". However, I wasn't sure how to actually turn that into a joke. Should Ray be onstage? But why would he be upset to see those letters? Should they actually stand for something offensive like K(rusty) K(omedy) K(lassic)? In the end, I was overthinking it. The original scene had Krusty, and Krusty is one of the few characters to have canonically given negative opinions about Raymond J. Johnson Jr. Once I realized that, the punchline was obvious.

Tomorrow we will enter the Top Ten!

[Haschel Cedricson]

10

This meme is a twofer; each section could stand on its own. Posted back-to-back, though? It manages to be even greater than the sum of its parts. It took a surprisingly long time to come up with the Wisconsin line because matching the stress pattern and syllable count of the original song was very important to me.

9

Here we see another classic Flanders scene transitioning seamlessly to an RJJ bit. I did cheat a little bit; in the original scene Flanders is shown directly from the front during his entire cider monologue. I kept that angle for panel 3, but felt the meme was more dynamic with wider shots.

8

This meme underwent a lot of revision before I settled on the final form you see here, and this is definitely the best version. Originally I was to replace all of Guy Incognito's head, hat and all. However, I realized that the meme only works if Moe is seeing through a crappy disguise, and so instead of giving Incognito RJJ's hat I decided to recolor the top hat to the same color scheme as RJJ's hat. Then I tried swapping the mustaches, but the end result looked TOO different than RJJ. Finally, I was going to have a second RJJ discover his exact double, but seeing a dialog-free final panel of an unconscious RJJ kept making me laugh and so I ended the meme there.

7

Another poster requested that I make this meme, and even though I had no idea how to make animations in GIMP I decided it was worth teaching myself. I am so glad I did; the results were phenomenal. Getting the speed right ended up being the hardest part.

The most fascinating thing for me was seeing how few frames were necessary for each cycle. The brain is

very good

at filling in implied information; that's something I was always academically aware of but it was legit exciting to see it in action this way.

6

Turning "Genghis" into "Rayngis" would have been funny enough, but the fact that "Khan" rhymes with the first part of "Johnson"? I have made a ton of puns in my lifetime but I will never again make one as stupidly perfect as Raynghis J. Khanson.

When shared on Facebook, panel cropping showed only the first two panels so the hat was the only hint as to what might be coming when you clicked to see the entire meme. Imagining somebody getting sucker-punched by a third-panel Raynghis J. Khanson still makes me giggle.

[Haschel Cedricson]

5

If you watch RJJ in the Ode To Branson scene, he's never actually angry. However, the animators gave him a few frames where his facial expression conveys disappointment and rage, and those faces have been an invaluable tool in the Johnsonposting kit. Originally I was going to have Wiggum say his line like in the original episode and then have a third panel of RJJ saying his whole "You can call me Ray..." routine. However, I love the implications of flipping it; by having Wiggum demand that he *stop* telling him his name it conjures up an image that is far funnier than the hypothetical third panel would have been on it's own.

4

This isn't the only meme that replaced "gay" with "Ray", but it is the one that both took the most effort and has the funniest payoff. The animated gif memes all score high because, as I've mentioned before, there is something about effort-to-payoff ratios that elevates the art of the shitpost.

3

This meme has it all - calling him Johnson, his angry correction, that toned physique - all wrapped up in the lavish dances that are equally at home in Bollywood or on stage in Branson. The dance scene was a little tricky because the other Indian dancers are blurrier than I would have preferred, but I still love the results.

2

This is what happened when I took my observation about Flanders making for good RJJ memes and took it to its logical conclusion. The name "Lord Raymond James Johnston II" underwent a fair bit of focus-group testing; I couldn't think of a fancier way to say Raymond and wanted to make sure that the rest of the name was sufficiently aristocratic. The final meme is excellent; it invokes RJJ's comedy routine without quoting it directly, in a way that both is funny and builds on the original scene.

1

This ranking is over; give that meme the $10,000! The Johnson! His groin! It works on so many levels!

Of all the memes I have ever made or will make in the future, this is the pinnacle. I don't even remember how I got the idea, I just remember I was watching Taskmaster with my wife and daughter and the idea popped into my head. My daughter asked why I kept giggling and I couldn't explain, I just went to my computer during the commercial breaks and started making this gif. The animation took surprisingly few frames, but its enough for his facial expression to take us all on a wonderful journey.

Speaking of wonderful journeys, this concludes this thread. I appreciate everybody who stuck around for the whole thing. I know there's a huge difference between shitposts and shit posts, and while taking this ranking as seriously as I did was in itself sort of a joke (see my effort-to-payoff comments above), I do think that all pretentiousness aside I managed to paint an interesting journey through the creative process of memes.

Thanks again, and I'll see you in 100 more memes.

[Thestatusquo]

ban

[DeathRowKitty]

Correct, Tuesday is the day for posting this

[Ythan]

Whoa

[Irrelephant11]

Ego

[Not_Mafia]

I still don't get the name joke