These twenty funny photos are all Snapchats: quick phone pictures with a one-line caption typed across the middle, the format that defined Snapchat humour in the mid-2010s. The joke usually lives in the gap between picture and caption, so the first glance shows an ordinary fridge, tree or office desk, and the caption makes you look again.
Snapchat launched in 2011, founded by Stanford students Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown, around the idea of photos that vanish seconds after they are seen. Users soon learned to screenshot the best ones, and collections of captioned snaps spread on Reddit and humour sites. By early 2017 the app had around 160 million daily users. This set was gathered from Reddit posts collected by the humour site Someecards; the original photographers are anonymous.
Most of the jokes fall into a few familiar types: visual puns, signs that say more than intended, pets behaving like people, and small domestic disasters. The notes below explain what is going on in each picture.
Food, kitchens and household mysteries
A box of freezer bags sits neatly on a freezer shelf, still sealed, with the caption doubting that the photographer's wife understands what they are for. The joke is a literal reading of the product name.
A school anatomy diagram shows a figure with a skeleton outlined behind it, and someone has added a speech bubble asking whether it is right behind him. It works as a horror-movie line, because the skeleton really is behind, or rather inside, him.
A microwave touch panel shows a baked-potato icon with steam lines, and the caption says it looks like a turd wearing sunglasses. Once seen, the resemblance is hard to forget.
Bananas with drawn-on faces look on in horror as someone holds up a slice of banana bread, captioned with one name shouted in grief. Doodling faces on fruit is a classic snap gag that turns breakfast into a tragedy.
School, office and public life
A classmate's long, wavy hair is framed with a hand-drawn bowl and spoon, turning it into spilled soup or noodles. It is a typical Snapchat drawing joke, made with the app's doodle tool.
CPR training mannequins stand in a circle around a baby doll on the classroom floor, captioned as the summoning of a child. Arranged this way, ordinary first-aid equipment looks like a strange ritual.
Two kitchen whisks are held in front of a sleepy black cat to form a giant pair of whiskers. The pun is visual and verbal at once.
A small painted scene on a textured wall shows one figure kneeling and lifting something up toward a robed figure on a rocky ledge, and the caption calls it a blooper from The Lion King. It recalls the famous scene in which Rafiki raises Simba on Pride Rock.
A pen has been drawn so realistically on a notepad that it looks like a real one lying on the page. The caption admits it is a prank aimed at a colleague who never wears her glasses.
Signs, streets and bad luck
Bits of mashed food are scattered across a car door and seat, with the caption simply saying there was a bee in the car. Anyone who has panicked at an insect in a moving vehicle will recognise the scene.
A roadworks sign tells drivers to wait when the red light shows, and a pedestrian has dutifully stopped on the pavement in front of it. The caption sympathises with her mistake.
A car has crashed into a sign for a psychic reader, knocking it over. The caption makes the obvious joke that she did not see that coming.
A sign reading Danger, This Animal Bites is fixed to a tree trunk, probably left behind at an old animal enclosure. The caption suggests it must be a very aggressive tree.
A bright red sign at an orchard asks visitors not to ride in wagons down the sidewalk, but its cartoon shows a girl having the time of her life doing exactly that. The caption points out that the sign makes the forbidden activity look like great fun.
Pets, kids and everyday mishaps
A teenager falls off his skateboard with his leg in the air and a pained grimace. The caption jokes that the crash makes him look decades older, a reminder that skateboard falls are part of learning.
In a Chipotle restaurant, a man has his finger stuck in one of the holes of a perforated wooden wall while a friend stands nearby. Decorative perforated panels like this are common in restaurants, and the snap captures the exact moment curiosity backfired.
A small white dog is stained green from head to tail after following its owner around while the lawn was being mown. The dog looks entirely content with its new colour.
A warehouse worker in a high-visibility jacket holds a box full of printed cards that all say Monday. The caption calls it a case of the Mondays, turning an office cliché into a literal object.
A toddler stands on a large book, bending over and pulling at it, unable to work out why it will not lift. It is a gentle, universal moment of a small child discovering physics.
A dog sits at the end of a long line of stuffed toys stretching across the living room floor. The caption says he thinks he has to wait in line for a treat, though the photo suggests a patient owner arranged the queue.
Why captioned photos are so funny
Humour researchers often describe comedy as a harmless surprise: something seems wrong or out of place, but in a way that poses no real threat. Captioned snaps are built on exactly that. The picture sets up an ordinary scene, and the caption supplies the twist that makes it absurd.
They also feel personal. Unlike polished memes, these are clearly real people's kitchens, offices and pets, photographed on a phone in the moment. That everyday quality is why collections like this still get shared years after the original snaps disappeared from the app.
Sources: Someecards: funniest Snapchats, Wikipedia: Snapchat.
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