The Brief: "Wheels on a shopping cart be like" memes parody how grocery store shopping carts often come with three functioning wheels and one wonky one.
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Pushing a loud, slow-moving, or otherwise ineffective shopping cart is just a part of being a modern consumer. “Wheels on a shopping cart be like” memes poke fun at how often at least one wheel of a shopping cart seems to always end up being much jankier than the rest. This meme format pairs four images together in which one thing is not like the others.
Usually, such memes depict three of the same thing along with a fourth thing that is much funkier and more unruly than the first three. Many make the fourth image a GIF to further emphasize how a broken wheel causes a disruption to the entire cart.
These memes are somewhat reminiscent of bowling alley screen memes in their spontaneity, silliness, and niche relatability. Others follow a take on nobody: me memes with the text “nobody: wheels on a shopping cart:”
This format has been adopted across multiple social media platforms including Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter. Various fandoms and meme communities have created a number of creative takes on the format.
Some of these memes suggest that an impossible-seeming shopping cart with four working wheels could only be found at the mysterious and widely-memed Area 51.
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Wheels on a shopping cart be like: pic.twitter.com/nQLlqJsWBo
— Sun (@0thFromOurStar) September 3, 2019