Pick a lane, society.
Overview
This is a two-panel collage meme that humorously highlights contradictory messages sent by society about self-comparison. The top panel displays text on the left reading 'Society: "Don't compare yourself to others."', paired on the right with a reaction image of a confused, skeptical man holding his hand out in a questioning, disbelieving gesture. The bottom panel displays text on the left reading 'Also society: "Why aren't you like so-and-so?"', paired on the right with a reaction image of a young girl looking unimpressed, annoyed, and side-eyeing to call out the clear hypocrisy of the conflicting guidance.
Origin notes
This meme was sourced from an RSS feed of the Reddit: Meme subreddit, shared with the original title 'Pick a lane, society'. It uses two widely circulated, popular pre-existing reaction images: the top right figure is Jake Peralta (played by Andy Samberg) from the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and the bottom right figure is young Raven Baxter (played by Raven-Symoné) from the Disney Channel series That's So Raven. This two-panel format pairing conflicting statements with matching reaction images is a common meme template used to call out hypocrisy or contradictory social norms.