On the Reddit forum r/sbubby, appropriately nicknamed “ridett,” there are only two rules: “baco no taco” and “bubgers please.” If it sounds like gibberish, that’s because the majority of the forum is. That’s the whole idea: contributors take self-altered images of common corporate brand logos— Subway, Dunkin Donuts, Taco Bell, and the like — and warp them and their slogans into babble. The Subway tagline, “Eat fresh,” for example, is mangled into “eef freef.” Applebee’s Grill and Bar becomes Applebapple’s Nehhborhor Grib and Bib. Weedy’s boasts Old-Fashioned Hurgusburgus. Bubger Kirg urges customers to “Have It in a Way.” Truly, it’s the forum the Internet deserves.
Scrolling through the images, however, it’s easy to rationalize possible deeper meanings for these posts. Perhaps they’re meant to satirize corporations; perhaps they’re meant to expose our latent acceptance of whatever marketing teams throw at us. Yet, as the moderators themselves tell Creators, the true purpose of the forum is simply that “it’s funny, that’s all.”
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The forum itself is redolent of absurdism, like much of the Internet. An encounter I observed in the comments section of one post involved one contributor stating that he doesn’t “understand the point of this sub,” with another contributor responding, “That’s the point.”
Indeed, if you’re looking for a deeper meaning to it all, r/sbubby is not the forum for you. Take a note from Sisyphus and embrace the absurd. Or, to quote the slogan of Taco Baco, “Tinkle Outside the Binkle.”
Check out more hacked corporate logos on the Reddit forum r/sbubby.
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