The Brief: A screenshot from American Dad! of Stan Smith looking at a multi-colored meter on the refrigerator is being used in Reddit memes about people jumping to conclusions.
DEEP DIVE
American Dad! meter memes come from a season one episode of the adult cartoon series in which Stan Smith (the American dad) refers to a chart on the family’s refrigerator that says that they’re in “terror alert orange which means something might go down somewhere in some way at some point in time.”
These memes have made appearances online since as early as 2014 and grew in popularity on the r/memes and r/dankmemes subreddits in late October 2020. Popular iterations of these image macros show the meter between orange and red. Captions and labels typically depict someone making assumptions and jumping to conclusions which may be sexist, racist, or otherwise derogatory.
May we burn her? from memes
Fuck school… from dankmemes