The Bizarre, Brilliant Meme-ification of ‘Frasier’

A new Frasier might be set to premiere on Paramount+ this week, but true fans of Kelsey Grammer’s irascible radio host know that he already found a new audience years ago on social media. Dr. Crane’s Must-See TV neighbors Friends and Seinfeld have generated endless reams of articles, blog posts, and BuzzFeed quizzes, along with a few books, but in their own way, the internet’s ongoing fascination with uncanny, often dark Frasier memes illustrates a truth that devotees of the sitcom have long recognized: Frasier has always been the most powerful of them all.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any TV series with a somewhat respectable following will eventually become viral social media chum, but Frasier’s memes stand a dank cut above the rest. For years, fans have contributed some of Instagram and Weird Twitter’s most bespoke work. In 2018, Priscilla Frank explored the phenomenon for HuffPost and posited that perhaps millennials—specifically, millennial men—saw themselves in Frasier’s portrayal of generational disconnect, particularly as it pertains to masculinity. (Also, as The New Yorker so kindly pointed out in 2020, many millennials also live with their dads.)

Still, how do we explain the utter weirdness of some of these memes? Take, for instance, Frasier Looking at Video Games—an account on X (formerly Twitter) that often superimposes video game imagery onto various stills from the show.

Read more at The Daily Beast.