British humor can be difficult to quantify and qualify. The more exposed to it you become, the more you start to truly ‘get’ all the nuanced layers of irony and banter. However, broadly speaking, British comedy has a strong tradition of satire, absurdity, sarcasm, self-deprecation, puns, and insults.

And if you follow any popular British comedians like Jimmy Carr or Ricky Gervais, then you know that taboo topics don’t stay taboo for long. Controversial? Naturally. Hilarious to the point that you’re wheezing? It happens more often than you’d expect.

Comedy is a nuanced subject as a whole. It’s a balancing act. On the one hand, you have to know your audience, respect them, and cater to their tastes and whims. You wouldn’t tell dark jokes to a room full of family-friendly pun-lovers. Nor would you tell dad jokes to a cynical auditorium that’s heard it all and needs a bit of spice to get them to chuckle.

Though you shouldn’t be ‘punching down’ in your stand-up routines, you also won’t get many laughs by being too nice or safe. Humor is about the unexpected. The surprising. The ironic. It’s about showing the contrast between our expectations and reality. Arguably, nothing should be sacred. And censorship is the enemy.

Often, the best jokes come at the cost of (gently) insulting oneself, someone else, or social norms. That’s the price of entry! But you can’t play it fast and loose with superficial, dumb humor. The jokes actually have to be witty, otherwise, you’re in hot water if you’re edgy for the sake of cheap shock value.

To classify Great British Memes as a phenomenon would be to do it a slight disservice. It is a digital force of nature. The odds are that its featured content has graced your social media feeds at least once. They’re just that widespread. And they are incredibly consistent with their posting, so there's always some fresh content to look forward to.

Created by founder George Bacon all the way back in 2017, the project is the foundational part of the well-known GBM Group social creative agency.

Great British Memes mainly focuses on spreading entertaining, humorous, and engaging content on the web. It has been wildly successful over the years! And it continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

On Instagram alone, the project has a whopping 2.7 million followers. A further 1.1 million internet users follow the project’s Facebook account while 1.9 million folks follow its TikTok page.

"Great British Memes was founded in 2017, and has now become one of many pages that GBM owns. Great British Memes was a project I started whilst at uni, and began to kick off straight away!" Bacon, the founder of both Great British Memes and GBM Group, told Bored Panda during a previous interview back in 2023.

After finishing his degree and graduating from Portsmouth University, Bacon founded the GBM Group company itself in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. The founder shared some of his thoughts on internet memes, virality, and humor with us earlier.

According to him, it’s “definitely British” memes that resonate the most with the audience. “However, we jump on reactive and cultural things happening in the UK which really helps with keeping our audience up to date," he said.

From Bacon’s perspective, one of the best tools in any content creator’s arsenal is consistency. Its impact is invaluable. "Consistency definitely helps, we've been posting on Great British Memes daily for the last 6 years. That's some commitment!" he said, adding that the team tends to post at least 3 to 4 times each day.

During our earlier conversation back in 2023, the founder opened up to Bored Panda that the London-based GBM Group team consisted of 7 full-time and freelance employees. “The GBM-owned network is now over 10 million followers strong, with the majority of their audience based in the UK," Bacon said at the time.

Which of these memes did you enjoy the most, Pandas? What was your first experience being exposed to British humor? Are there any comedians or shows that you’d recommend to anyone completely new to Britishness?

Do you have any silly puns that you’d like to share with everyone else? Brew yourself a cuppa, grab some biscuits, and scroll down to the comments to share your thoughts!