Author: Andrew Ramsden

The following templates are provided as a quick way to generate personalised Memes based on popular meme image macros.

The templates are setup to give you guidance as to what kinds of text makes most sense for each situation.

Each template has been given a rating range based on the Meme Thinking Cringeometer. This gives you a sense of how risque each meme is likely to be. Note: If you try hard enough you can make any meme NSFW, so use your judgement.

Meme Template Instructions:

1. Open the template file in Microsoft Powerpoint
2. Find the meme you want to customise
3. Edit the text
4. Right-click and ‘Save as Picture…’
5. Image is saved out and ready to go
6. You can upload or paste it into chats, documents, or presentations from there.

Download the Templates

In today’s hybrid and emotionally nuanced workplaces, humour isn’t just a way to lighten the mood—it’s a strategic communication tool. But when memes, jokes, or pop culture references go wrong, the fallout can range from awkward silence to disciplinary action. That’s where the Meme Thinking Cringeometer comes in: a simple, psychologically-informed scale to help teams calibrate humour in the workplace for the right context, the right audience, and the right level of hilarity.

Two Axes of Workplace Humour

To understand how the Cringeometer works, we need to start with the foundational insight from the first model (see image above): humour in the workplace exists across two intersecting spectrums:

1. Funny to Not Funny
2. Safe for Work (SFW) to Not Safe for Work (NSFW)

These two spectrums often—but not always—align. For instance:

• A dad joke might be totally safe, but land so flat it’s barely a chuckle.
• An edgy meme might be hilarious in a private group chat, but entirely inappropriate in a town hall presentation.

This disconnection between humour and safety is what makes humour in professional settings so tricky. Often, the safer a joke is, the less funny it becomes—yet funny doesn’t have to mean fired.

Enter: The Cringeometer

The Meme Thinking Cringeometer is a five-point scale that helps teams navigate this complexity:

Rating	Description
1	Cringe – Groan-worthy, outdated, painfully generic (e.g., “Monday again?”)
2	Bland – Safe, but lacking flavour; corporate email banter
3	Chuckles – Light, relatable humour that most people can appreciate
4	LOL – Edgy, surprising, possibly niche, but still context-aware
5	NSFW – Hilarious in the right group chat; dangerous elsewhere

The Cringeometer helps us move away from a binary view of humour (funny or inappropriate) to a sliding scale that balances hilarity, edginess, safety, and audience.

How to Make Unfunny Jokes Funnier

Even a “Cringe” or “Bland” joke can be redeemed with some smart delivery tactics:

• Use it ironically – “Yes, I am going to make a ‘dog ate my work’ joke in 2025.”
• Break the fourth wall – Acknowledge that the joke is bad as you tell it.
• Subvert old tropes – “There are 10 types of people in the world… and I’m not explaining this joke again.”
• Contextualise it – Add a layer that makes it specific to your audience’s shared experience or pain point.

These approaches tap into the psychology of shared meaning and meta-awareness, which research shows can enhance humour and social bonding (Martin & Ford, 2018).

How to Make Edgy Jokes Safer

If you’re hovering around the LOL/NSFW zone, you don’t have to ditch your wit entirely. Try moderating the delivery:

• Make it self-deprecating – If the joke’s at anyone’s expense, make sure it’s yours.
• Let the audience finish it – Implication makes people complicit, and it feels less aggressive.
• Adapt niche humour – Take a deep-cut meme and broaden it just enough to let others in.
• Know your audience – Humour is riskier with big, diverse groups. But in a close-knit team? You’ve got more leeway.

These tactics build on humour’s ability to defuse tension, signal humility, and encourage connection, as shown in psychological studies of workplace wellbeing (Mesmer-Magnus et al., 2012).

When in Doubt: Aim for Chuckles

In the corporate wild, Chuckles (3) is your home base. It’s:

• Safe enough to keep HR happy
• Specific enough to be relatable
• Funny enough to break the ice

When presenting to a large audience or cross-functional group, it’s usually best to stay at levels 2–3 on the Cringeometer. If you know your team well and the setting is informal, you can lean into level 4. Level 5? That’s after-work drinks or private Slack threads—with clear consent and context.

Ironically, even dad jokes can live in the Chuckles zone—if you lean into the cringe. That meta-awareness adds a layer of playfulness, shifting the joke from bland to knowing.

Why This Matters

Humour isn’t just about laughs—it’s about emotion, identity, and inclusion. In a meme-saturated world, learning to read the room (and the meme) is a form of emotional intelligence. The Cringeometer is a shared language that teams can use to play, connect, and communicate more effectively—without crossing the line.

So next time you’re about to drop that spicy meme in a presentation or hit “send” on a reaction GIF, pause. Ask yourself: where does this sit on the Cringeometer?

And remember—cringe is a feature, not a bug. If you do it right.

References

Martin, R. A., & Ford, T. (2018). The psychology of humor: An integrative approach (2nd ed.). Academic Press.

Mesmer-Magnus, J., Glew, D. J., & Viswesvaran, C. (2012). A meta-analysis of positive humor in the workplace. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 27(2), 155–190. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683941211199554

In a world saturated with information—emails, messages, dashboards, intranets, and endless Slack channels—one might not expect that the humble meme, emoji, or GIF could offer any real value in the workplace. But far from being frivolous, these forms of modern digital expression are rapidly becoming essential tools for cutting through the noise, restoring human connection in virtual environments, and unlocking the creativity and psychological safety needed for effective teamwork.

What Is a Meme—Really?

Originally coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (1976), a meme was defined as a unit of cultural transmission, akin to a gene in its ability to replicate, mutate, and spread across populations. In the age of the internet, the term has evolved to encompass visual and textual formats like images, GIFs, emojis, and AI-generated art, which convey meaning quickly and often humourously. These modern memes are not just tools for entertainment; they are compressed cultural artefacts—rich in emotional nuance and social context.

Today, we can extend the definition of memes to include:

• GIFs, which convey emotion or reactions more vividly than static text.
• AI-generated art trends, which remix cultural styles into new visual languages.
• Emojis, which supplement or even replace language in conveying tone and affect.

These units of media act as shorthand for complex ideas, feelings, or social norms, shared and reshaped within communities and workplaces alike.

1. Cutting Through the Noise

In information-dense digital environments, brevity is power. Memes are cognitively efficient. A single image or emoji can:

• Replace multiple lines of explanation
• Grab attention in overstuffed feeds
• Offer a humourous “hook” that boosts recall

According to Mayer’s (2009) Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. Visuals reduce cognitive load and enhance message retention, making memes an effective tool for internal communications, especially in remote or hybrid setups where asynchronous channels dominate.

Memes and GIFs can also engage the brain’s reward system. Humour activates the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala (Mobbs et al., 2003), which supports attention and emotional tagging—critical for standing out in a sea of emails.

2. Restoring Emotional Cues in Remote Work

Digital communication strips away much of what makes human interaction… human. Non-verbal signals like facial expressions, tone, and body language are often lost, especially in chats or cameras-off meetings. Memes and emojis help restore emotional bandwidth.

• Emojis can replicate facial expressions, shifting tone from ambiguous to warm, playful, or empathetic (Skovholt et al., 2014).
• GIFs and reaction memes provide affective presence—the ability to transmit emotion in a team—even when video isn’t used (Wang et al., 2020).
• AI-generated content and stylised memes allow creative expression that resonates more personally than generic stock visuals.

In psychological terms, these media elements enhance emotional contagion, the subconscious sharing of moods and emotions, which is vital for empathy, trust, and collaboration (Hatfield et al., 1994).

3. Creating Deeper Social Bonds

Memes create shared language. A well-placed joke or GIF isn’t just funny—it’s an invitation to connection. In this way, memes foster a sense of psychological safety, which Edmondson (1999) identified as essential for team learning and performance.

Humour, in particular, is socially binding:

• It releases endorphins and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, helping people relax (Dunbar et al., 2012).
• Relaxation supports divergent thinking, increasing creativity and problem-solving potential (Isen et al., 1987).
• Shared humour enhances in-group bonding, helping employees feel like they belong (Martin, 2007).

A workplace that encourages authentic expression through memes, emojis, and visual creativity signals that it values culture, not just compliance. This becomes especially important in remote and hybrid teams, where casual social moments are rare and harder to orchestrate.

Final Thoughts

In the past, “professionalism” may have meant a sterile tone and minimal self-expression. But in a world of distributed teams and digital communication, we need new ways to bring humanity back to work. Memes, GIFs, emojis, and AI-generated visuals are more than fun—they are fast, affective, and cognitively efficient forms of communication that build culture, trust, and creativity.

They help us be seen, heard, and felt—even when we’re far apart.

References

Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press.

Dunbar, R. I. M., Baron, R., Frangou, A., Pearce, E., Van Leeuwen, E. J., Stow, J., … & van Vugt, M. (2012). Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1731), 1161–1167. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.1373

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge University Press.

Isen, A. M., Daubman, K. A., & Nowicki, G. P. (1987). Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(6), 1122–1131. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.52.6.1122

Martin, R. A. (2007). The Psychology of Humor: An Integrative Approach. Elsevier Academic Press.

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia Learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Mobbs, D., Greicius, M. D., Abdel-Azim, E., Menon, V., & Reiss, A. L. (2003). Humor modulates the mesolimbic reward centres. Neuron, 40(5), 1041–1048. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(03)00751-7

Skovholt, K., Grønning, A., & Kankaanranta, A. (2014). The communicative functions of emoticons in workplace emails. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(4), 780–797. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12063

Wang, L., Waldman, D. A., & Zhang, H. (2020). A meta-analysis of shared leadership and team effectiveness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 105(10), 1136–1150. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000480

Humour is one of humanity’s most cherished forms of connection. It disarms tension, bridges divides, reveals intelligence, and generates joy in both social settings and in the workplace. But humour didn’t appear out of nowhere. Long before stand-up comedy, internet memes, or dry wit, there was laughter — breathy, involuntary, and born in the bodies of our mammalian ancestors. Understanding humour begins with understanding the evolution of laughter and the deep biological and social roots from which it springs.

🌱 Laughter Before Language: A Mammalian Story

The evolutionary story of humour begins more than 60 million years ago, long before humans walked the Earth. Among early social mammals — from rats and dogs to primates — vocalisations associated with rough-and-tumble play emerged as crucial signals. These weren’t jokes, but rather honest indicators of non-aggression. Laughter-like panting, chirping, or breathy vocalisations accompanied playful bites and chases, telling partners: “This is just fun. You’re safe.”

This early laughter served at least three important purposes:

• ✅ Indicating play intent – to prevent escalation into real aggression.
• 🤝 Bonding through shared joy – helping build long-term social relationships.
• 🧘 Engaging the parasympathetic nervous system – allowing animals to relax and emotionally regulate after arousal.

Even today, rats produce ultrasonic chirps when tickled. Dogs emit “laughs” during play. Chimpanzees pant rhythmically when mock-wrestling. These vocalisations laid the groundwork for the rich, nuanced expression of laughter we now recognise in humans.

🐒 Ape Laughter and the Roots of Emotion

Roughly 10–25 million years ago, the common ancestor of modern great apes developed more elaborate forms of laughter. Among chimpanzees and gorillas, laughter became more complex — used not just during play, but also to strengthen alliances and diffuse tension in hierarchical groups.

This phase marked the beginning of laughter as a social tool, not just a reflex. It also set the stage for a crucial evolutionary leap: the emergence of dual vocal pathways in early hominins.

🚶 Early Hominins and the Social Dimension

Between 2 and 4 million years ago, early human ancestors such as Australopithecus and early members of the Homo genus developed increased control over breath and vocalisation. This allowed for more volitional vocal behaviour — we could now fake laughter, mimic sounds, and eventually produce speech.

This development transformed laughter from a purely affective, automatic response into something that could be strategic, social, and symbolic.

Laughter began to carry layers of meaning:

• 🫢 Spontaneous laughter still signalled authentic emotion.
• 🎭 Polite or strategic laughter helped manage social dynamics.
• 😏 Mocking or ironic laughter allowed expression of status, critique, or shared cynicism.

In this way, laughter evolved into a flexible tool for human social navigation — a kind of emotional Swiss Army knife.

🧠 The Birth of Humour: Homo Sapiens and the Rise of Cognitive Play

Humour, as distinct from laughter, likely evolved with Homo sapiens, emerging in tandem with symbolic thought, language, and social complexity around 200,000 years ago.

Where laughter is found in other animals, humour is uniquely human.

Humour requires:

• 🌀 Violation of expectation – something surprising or incongruent.
• 🛟 Safe context – the brain must recognise there’s no real threat.
• 🤯 Cognitive appraisal – understanding the twist, irony, or absurdity.
• 🤝 Shared mental models – appreciating humour often depends on common knowledge or cultural cues.

In evolutionary terms, humour became a signal of intelligence and shared values. It allowed humans to:

• Test group membership (“If you get the joke, you’re one of us.”)
• Diffuse social tension (“We’re okay now.”)
• Critique or challenge norms and hierarchies in non-threatening ways.
• Attract mates or allies by displaying creativity and mental agility.

As Bryant (2020) describes, laughter became embedded in conversation as a way to synchronise, affiliate, and disambiguate communication. It was no longer just a response — it was a signal.

🤣 Modern-Day Social Complexity

Humour has evolved in incredibly complex ways and serves a range of modern social functions. Three of the most important are:

• Colaughter: Joint laughter signals deep affiliation and can be recognised even by infants at 5 months old.
• Contagion: Laughter is contagious and more efficient than overlapping speech in transmitting social closeness.
• Volitional vs. Spontaneous Laughter: Humans can fake laughter, but listeners across cultures reliably tell the difference.

🔐 Humour as Encrypted Empathy

One compelling modern theory, the encryption model of humour, suggests that humour functions like a secret handshake — a way to test mutual understanding. When someone “gets the joke,” they reveal a shared context, belief, or cultural knowledge. When they don’t, we register a mismatch.

In this way, humour is both inclusive and exclusive: it brings people together, but also subtly distinguishes those who “belong.”

🤝 The Bottom Line: Why Humour Matters

Across its evolutionary arc, laughter and humour have always signalled the same essential idea:

“You’re safe here. You’re one of us.”

From the breathy pant of a chimp to a perfectly timed punchline in a Zoom meeting, humour continues to serve our deepest needs: belonging, bonding, and buffering the stresses of life. This makes it a powerful tool not only after-hours, but at work.

And though the words humour and human have different etymological roots — one from Latin umor (moisture) and the other from homo (man) — we like to imagine that they are intimately linked.

Because to be human is to laugh, and to laugh — truly, insightfully, joyfully — is perhaps the most human thing of all.

Evolutionary Timeline

Phase	Time Period (Approx.)	Group	Key Developments	Purpose & Function
1. Early Mammals	~200 million years ago	Early mammals	Emergence of affective vocalisations (e.g., distress calls, play sounds)	Basic vocal emotional communication for survival (e.g., parent-offspring bonding, social cohesion)
2. Social Mammals	~60–80 million years ago	Placental mammals (e.g., rodents, canids, early primates)	Evolution of social play vocalisations — rough-and-tumble play accompanied by ultrasonic or breathy sounds (e.g., rat chirps, dog “laughs”)	Honest signalling of non-aggression, social bonding through play, emotional synchrony
3. Last Common Ancestor of Great Apes	~10–25 million years ago	Hominids (including chimpanzees, gorillas, humans)	Panting play vocalisations become more elaborate (e.g., chimpanzee laughter); increasingly used in social play contexts	Ritualised communication of benign intent; reinforced affiliative bonds and reduced conflict in social groups
4. Early Hominins	~2–4 million years ago	Australopithecines, early Homo species	Increased breath control and dual vocal pathways (emotion-based + volitional vocalization); mimicry of affective sounds begins	Laughter becomes more flexible — used strategically for bonding, defusing tension, or even deception
5. Anatomically Modern Humans	~200,000 years ago to present	Homo sapiens	Integration with language, emergence of spontaneous and volitional laughter; expansion into humour, irony, sarcasm	Laughter and humour serve complex social roles: alliance formation, covert signalling of shared knowledge, managing group dynamics, etc.

📚 References

Bryant, G. A. (2020). Evolution, Structure, and Functions of Human Laughter. In K. Floyd & R. Weber (Eds.), The Handbook of Communication Science and Biology (1st ed., pp. 63–77). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351235587-7

Gervais, M., & Wilson, D. S. (2005). The Evolution and Functions of Laughter and Humor: A Synthetic Approach. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 80(4), 395–430. https://doi.org/10.1086/498281

Scott, S. K., Lavan, N., Chen, S., & McGettigan, C. (2014). The social life of laughter. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(12), 618–620. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.09.002

Humour isn’t just about punchlines and memes. It’s often the canary in the cultural coal mine — a proxy for psychological safety, shared values, and how well your team handles the hard stuff.

So what does the way your team jokes (or doesn’t) really say about your culture?

Let us introduce you to the Meme Thinking Cultural Barometer — a five-level diagnostic tool disguised as a humorous self-help guide. From deadpan silences to leader-approved GIFs, this model helps you assess the maturity of humour in your workplace.

Can you relate to any of the following?

• You hear a joke in the meeting and immediately check HR policies
• Someone makes a joke and says “too soon?
• The loudest person in the room is the only one laughing
• Your team has a shared meme thread
• Your CEO opens town hall with a custom GIF

These are some of the different ways we see humour manifest in organisations, and they map to the 5 levels of the Meme Thinking Cultural Barometer.

The Five Levels

1. Suppressive

• Scene: A junior staff member tries to lighten a tense all-hands meeting with a light remark about everyone’s overflowing inboxes. The room goes silent. A manager raises an eyebrow and says, “Let’s keep this professional, please.”
• What it says about your culture: Laughter feels risky. Creativity and honest dialogue are suppressed. People walk on eggshells.

2. Avoidant

• Scene: During a retrospective, someone brings up how the team keeps missing sprint goals. A colleague jumps in with, “Well, we are agile — missing deadlines is basically part of the process, right?” Nervous laughter. The topic dies.
• What it says about your culture: Jokes are shields, not bridges. Real issues are swept under the rug by nervous giggles.

3. Attention-seeking

• Scene: During a team lunch, one person dominates the conversation with sarcastic impressions of the sales team. Some people laugh, but one colleague quietly leaves early. Later, they admit they don’t feel safe speaking up.
• What it says about your culture: Humour is a spotlight, not a campfire. Used to centre ego, not connection. Some people become the punchline.

4. Connection-building

• Scene: The team hits a tricky roadblock. One person sends a meme in Slack that pokes fun at the challenge — “When you realise you scoped the impossible… but you’re in it together.” It gets emoji reactions and turns into a productive thread.
• What it says about your culture: Humour brings people together. It names the challenge but doesn’t deflect it. Builds rapport, not silos.

5. Integrated Humour

• Scene: At the start of the year, the team jokingly dubbed a stretch goal “Project Unicorn.” Months later, the unicorn appears in a quarterly slide deck—horn, glitter, and all—used to celebrate progress and acknowledge how far they’ve come. Everyone laughs and reminisces. The humour is tied to collective effort, not individual embarrassment.
• What it says about your culture: Shared jokes become cultural glue. They honour the journey and remind everyone that they’re seen, understood, remembered, and we’re all in it together.

Putting It to Work

Some ideas for how you might action this in your team(s):

• Run a team reflection: Which level are we at now? Where do we want to be?
• Celebrate inclusive humour: Encourage jokes that connect, not divide.
• Get to know each other in personal ways (that align with code of conduct)
• Explore things that make us feel safe at work as a team.
• Brainstorm ideas for how you might bring some levity and creativity into future projects.

Most importantly…

If you had to boil Meme Thinking down to one idea, it’s this:

Humour belongs in the workplace

If and when this gets lost, we know that poor workplace outcomes follow. So when in doubt, let laughter be your guide.