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The 'you may know me from' meme is awesome for explaining your job

Hi, I'm a science communicator. You may know me from such greatest hits as...

Mihai Andrei
January 25, 2019 @ 8:35 pm

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If you’ve been paying attention to Twitter recently, you’ve probably noticed a new meme that pokes fun at some of the silly questions we get about our jobs — which happens a lot in science. It’s a reference to The Simpsons’ classic character Troy McClure, who would introduce himself along the lines of “Hi, I’m Troy McClure. You may know me from classic hits such as …”. As you’d expect from Twitter, they turned that into pure gold. Here’s an example:

https://twitter.com/10MinuteHistory/status/1086610448772931584

My favorite, however, was the climate scientists — yes, we also get a lot of comments and emails like this.

Other academics were all over it.

https://twitter.com/spinster13/status/1086539123022737408

https://twitter.com/EscoBlades/status/1087429605861048320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1087429605861048320&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmashable.com%2Farticle%2Fyou-may-know-me-from-meme-twitter%2F

The meme caught on quickly, spreading like wildfire.

https://twitter.com/reepRN/status/1085722139037233152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1085722139037233152&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmashable.com%2Farticle%2Fyou-may-know-me-from-meme-twitter%2F

At the time of writing this, there are over 400 replies to Doug Priest’s tweet alone.

https://twitter.com/MGArchitect/status/1086865845098373121

Here’s one that is bound to stir some spirits:

Hi, I’m a science communicator for ZME Science. You may know me from greatest hits including “Yes, this is based on research,” “We can’t teach the controversy,” and “Sorry, that’s not research, that’s a Google search.”

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