elodieunderglass:

softmore-slump:

what the fuck does this even mean

[explaining the joke by request, please press J to skip on desktop:

this is a photo of a lemonade dispenser, labeled “if our lemons were any fresher, you’d slap ‘em.” The manufacturer apparently wants you to know that their lemons are newly harvested, but not so newly harvested that they must be beaten. It sounds disturbing and funny, because why would you hit a lemon?

In some American idioms, “getting/being fresh” is a synonym for being inappropriate. This is outdated slang and is no longer cool. It is used in a scolding sense. A child being rude, cheeky or sarcastic with their parents in the 80s or 90s might be accused of “being fresh.” It is also a synonym for flirtation that borders on unwanted. A man putting his hand on a woman’s leg in conversation might be scolded, “don’t get fresh.” In 1989 a band called Neneh Cherry did a song with the lyrics “I’ll make a move, nothing left to chance /
So don’t you get fresh with me”  and a band called Vanilla did a song in 1998 with the line “not today / don’t get fresh with me.”

Someone whose slang was stuck in that era might think that “getting fresh” merited a slap. 

Today, “fresh” is slang, but it is moving to a different definition. You might say someone has a “fresh” take on something (in the sense of a novel or original reaction) and it would be considered a positive thing. We also don’t joke as much about hitting people these days. When our generation makes jokes about hitting people, we’re more likely to make jokes like “punching Nazis” rather than jokes about “slapping children” or “lol sexual harassment.” But those jokes used to be very common and were considered the Height of Boomer Humor. That’s why sitcoms and standup routines from this era have aged very badly.

If you are more used to the newer meaning of the word, and if you were raised in a gentler time, it is startling and funny to read this apparent call to violence against lemons, so it makes you go “Hmmm”.

I apologise for ruining the joke for people who don’t like that. I have followers who don’t speak English as a native language, or whose neurodiversity means they don’t catch a lot of jokes, and I was asked to do explain this one.]