In a new weekly column, we profile the profiles you weren’t lolz enough to come up with, as they pick their top five posts and share with us some of their Insta know-how.
Starter pack memes are funny in their relatability. They’re also terrifying in their relatability. If you get the joke, you most likely are the joke, or used to be the joke, or at least you circulate in the same circles as the joke and therefore aren’t that far removed from ridicule yourself.
Saturday night in drinking warm, red wine and wearing a knitted cardigan from Beyond Retro? Check. Dropped half your paycheck on some fashionably fugly trainers? Course. Nandos hot sauce and a single potato populating the fridge? Wish we couldn’t relate.
The scientist behind these distillations of modern life is of course @poundlandbandit, AKA Dan, a 24-year old South Londoner whose ability to condense a stereotype or trend into a collage of four images under a quippy slogan is unparalleled. “I’ve always liked making people laugh. I’m not the best looking guy and I’m not really good at anything else, so it’s all I’ve got,” Dans tells i-D. What else could you want though? “I also get a kick out of really pissing off people who get offended by what I say, because 99% of the time they’re only angry because they fit the meme perfectly and can’t hack it,” Dan adds. Funny ‘cos it’s true.
On life outside the ‘gram (where?), Dan is somewhat vague. “I can’t really explain what I do in a way where I won’t sound like a scumbag,” he says *drum roll. “But basically — graffiti, heavy drinking and making the occasional mix with my boy UGETBOYED, mostly 80s synth and Italo-disco stuff.” And in a not very scumbag statement at all, he continues: “I’m into dressing semi-decent too, and I like a good bit of Spandau Ballet on karaoke.”
If that’s not enough of an introduction, have a look at the OG Poundlandbandit starter pack to further acquaint yourself. And then check out his top five posts ever below, and chuckle away to yourself while trying to pretend that it isn’t about you.
“This one is about a group of guys I saw a few weeks ago when making my way home from the pub, I had my headphones in and was trying to sleep and all I could hear was these pricks waffling on about how they had work at 7am and how coked up they were and I sort of took it from there.”
“The second one is based on two or three girls I’ve dated in the past/girls I’ve met, that whole fake ‘moody all the time look’ is so overdone and they think they’re original but I’ve seen about 1000 Instagrams with the same shit on it and I just thought ah, might as well have a dig for a laugh.”
“The third is just from something I thought of almost instantly after walking through Peckham Rye for ten minutes I’ve seen so many of these dudes it’s unbelievable. Big up King Krule though, his music is sick.”
“The fourth one was from a time I went out for a Sunday roast with my dad and brother and this shitty geezer dressed exactly like the meme walks in with a Pomeranian dog that started screeching and yapping the entire time we were there and I just wanted to slap him about a bit.”
“And the last one is just basically based on any squat rave in the world that’s ever happened, ever. This guy is somehow at all of them at the same time. Fuck white dreads and K-holing in an abandoned carpet warehouse to psy trance.”