• I think you may be parsing something wrong, or perhaps you’re ESL and something is translating weird to your native tongue. Idk friendo, it just rolls off the tongue weird and relies on a different interpretation of the phrase for each panel, it’s almost like “anti-wordplay”. You hit the nail on the head, but it’s a bent nail and it’s not gonna drive.

        • wowwoweowza@lemmy.worldOP
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          6 days ago

          Getting a post upvoted into the three digits isn’t a given at Lemmy. That a few people don’t get it or appreciate It isn’t on me and It surely isn’t a big deal. I notice you yourself have never contributed a post here. Try It out.

      • Tlaloc_Temporal
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        6 days ago

        Even knowing about the sentence structure “Do x by today”, this post is phrased weirdly.

        The top text uses the pattern "effect by amount", which leads people to see today as an amount in the bottom text. The bottom text is also a different kind of sentence entirely; “Shortening the lives of the rich by today” is a sentence fragment and needs to be modified, perhaps like “Me when I’m shortening the lives of the rich” to fit the format, or “Shorten the lives of the rich today” to fit the conclusion of the top text.

        In any case, the format of the meme, the top text, and the bottom text do not rhyme, which makes them difficult to understand in relation to each other.

  • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    6 days ago

    Explanation how I understand it:

    Being poor shortens your life

    Begin shortening the rich’s lives [by making them poor through expropriation], starting today

    It’s super confusingly phrased, tho

    • wowwoweowza@lemmy.worldOP
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      6 days ago

      I prefer not to start petty little battles at LEMMY. I’m sorry that you have never heard the phrase: Jack, make sure we get that delivery by today!

      It’s English. That’s the fun of it. You might try it.

      • M137@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Every comment here says you’re in the wrong, and your reaction to that is “No, it is everyone else who is wrong, not me.” Learn to take a hint.

          • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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            6 days ago

            The point of a system is what it does.

            Language is for communicating to other people. The other people you communicated to think you did it poorly (because you did).

            It’s ok to make mistakes. It’s not ok to refuse to acknowledge them.

    • HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz
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      6 days ago

      Me neither. Is it supposed to be a call of violence like “shorten the lives of the rich to today”? Or “shorten the lives of the rich by the end of today”?

    • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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      6 days ago

      As long as you don’t point out that Stalin and the bolshevik elite was rich, your good. Let’s see how this comment will do.