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Housing Market Is So Expensive Cruise Ship Living Is Cheaper Reaction Meme

This is a 4-panel reaction meme commenting on extreme housing unaffordability. The first panel shows a crudely drawn stick figure with a fixed, strained wide smile addressing a graphic of houses under an upward-trending price graph labeled as the housing market, asking "hey housing market hows it goin?". The second panel is a screenshot of a 2022 Yahoo News article, headlined that a couple sold their house to live permanently on cruise ships, as they found it cheaper than paying a mortgage, accompanied by a photo of a cruise ship. The third panel shows the same stick figure still holding the same fixed smile with no text, processing the news. The fourth panel shows the same figure, still with the unchanged forced smile, with the text "jesus christ" above it, conveying shocked, exasperated disbelief at how unaffordable housing has become that living on a cruise ship is a financially sensible alternative.
Make

Dialogue

hey housing market hows it goin?
A couple sold their house to live permanently on cruise ships because they said it's cheaper than paying a mortgage
jesus christ

Text content

The joke highlights how extreme housing price inflation has made home ownership unaffordable enough that living permanently on a cruise ship is a cheaper alternative, conveyed via the stick figure's unchanging strained smile and exasperated reaction.

Overview

This is a 4-panel reaction meme commenting on extreme housing unaffordability. The first panel shows a crudely drawn stick figure with a fixed, strained wide smile addressing a graphic of houses under an upward-trending price graph labeled as the housing market, asking "hey housing market hows it goin?". The second panel is a screenshot of a 2022 Yahoo News article, headlined that a couple sold their house to live permanently on cruise ships, as they found it cheaper than paying a mortgage, accompanied by a photo of a cruise ship. The third panel shows the same stick figure still holding the same fixed smile with no text, processing the news. The fourth panel shows the same figure, still with the unchanged forced smile, with the text "jesus christ" above it, conveying shocked, exasperated disbelief at how unaffordable housing has become that living on a cruise ship is a financially sensible alternative.

Origin notes

This meme is a derivative work using the widely popular "unchanging smiling stick figure reacting to increasingly shocking news" 4-panel meme template. It incorporates a real Yahoo News article published on May 13, 2022 by Waiyee Yip. The meme was distributed on X (formerly Twitter) via the account @meme.jpg, as indicated by the provided RSS source information. It circulated widely in the early 2020s alongside widespread discourse about rising mortgage costs and housing shortages across Western countries.

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