this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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Microblog Memes

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A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

RULES:

  1. Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
  2. Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
  3. You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
  4. Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
  5. Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If an image is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
  6. Absolutely no NSFL content.
  7. Be nice. Don't take anything personally. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements & arguments to private messages.
  8. No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.

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GI Rights Hotline (discuss.online)
submitted 11 months ago by bytesonbike@discuss.online to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

it doesn't really matter what the letters stand for.

This is American English we're talking about here, so of course the answer is ridiculously convoluted and involves everyone getting it wrong for so long that wrong eventually became right

It was originally an initialism used in U.S. Army paperwork for items made of galvanized iron.[2] The earliest known instance in writing is from either 1906[3] or 1907.[2]

During World War I, U.S. soldiers took to referring to heavy German artillery shells as "G.I. cans".[2][3] During the same war, "G.I.", reinterpreted as "government issue"[2] or "general issue",[3] began being used to refer to any item associated with the U.S. Army,[3] e.g., "G.I. soap".[3] Other reinterpretations of "G.I." include "garrison issue" and "general infantry".[3]

The earliest known recorded instances of "G.I." being used to refer to an American enlisted man as a slang term are from 1935.[2] In the form of "G.I. Joe" it was made better known due to it being taken as the title of a comic strip by Dave Breger in Yank, the Army Weekly, beginning in 1942.[2] A 1944 radio drama, They Call Me Joe, reached a much broader audience. It featured a different individual each week, thereby emphasizing that "G.I. Joe" encompassed U.S. soldiers of all ethnicities.[4] They Call Me Joe reached civilians across the U.S. via the NBC Radio Network and U.S. soldiers via the Armed Forces Radio Network. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower would notably reference the term "G.I. Joe," who he described as the main hero of World War II, in his May 1945 V-E address.