Two photographs of one helpless gesture
In July 2018 Twitter user @JacobxMcClain posted a photo of a pistol aimed at the sun. It spread as an image of a person fed up with the heat or with the unremovable target itself. Then users began captioning the weapon and the luminary as incomparable forces. This is an early, known branch of the format, but not the same picture that shows the transparent toy and the jet of water.
The variant with the water pistol appeared on Reddit from user _kyak_ on July 18, 2018, in r/MemeEconomy and r/Dankmemes. It kept the line of aim but emphasized helplessness even more: a small toy is pitted against a huge luminary. Information about the account's owner does not separately establish the photographer. What matters is only that the new pictures continued an already noticeable idea rather than depicting the same action with a real weapon.
An impossible target
In this frame the blue transparent toy is on the right, and the hand grips the handle from below. The word WATER is readable on the body, and a thin stream shoots out of the barrel with droplets scattering. The sun on the left looks like a bright white spot, and the sky around it is clear and blue. The water line coincides with the direction toward the luminary. There is no additional caption: the toy, the water, and the distant target already provide the visual basis of the joke.
A pistol usually implies affecting an object, but the sun is out of reach. The water variant further reduces the seriousness of the threat. Therefore the format fits an attempt to solve a large-scale task with a weak means: closing a system failure by restarting a tab, fixing a deadline with a new sticker, or beating a traffic jam with loud music. What is funny is the gap between the resolve of the gesture and the absence of any physical result.
The means do not match the scale
In the template, two objects can be captioned separately. The luminary stands for the big problem, and the toy for the chosen attempt at a solution. The stream makes the action visible: the hero is already trying, but the target stays the same. So the meme can be about powerlessness, a symbolic gesture, or an exaggerated faith in a small tool. Unlike a simple picture of failure, here the cause of the failure is clear before the result.
The humor can be gentle self-irony: a person knows that one action will change nothing, but still releases their short stream. Criticism can also work — the caption shows that a far-too-small measure is passed off as sufficient. In both cases the sunny spot keeps its inaccessibility: it cannot be shrunk to a target of the same size, or the mismatch of forces would disappear.
Three invented attempts
“Overheated room” for the sun and “I'm fanning myself with a sheet of paper” for the pistol create a literal conflict with the heat. The visible drops turn into a sign of energetic but very local struggle. For work, the target can be captioned “Twenty unresolved questions” and the toy “New chat for discussion.” The action begins immediately, although the list of questions does not get any shorter because of it.
The third variant is “A long queue” and “My intense gaze at the checkout.” The caption gives waiting the look of a heroic attack, and the toy explains its uselessness. These examples use the difference in size and reach, not merely the adjacency of a beautiful sky and an object. The reader needs to see the specific means and understand why it is incapable of changing precisely this kind of target.
