What's in the picture
A close-up: a man's hand with fine hair holds a black putty knife, with a thick white mass on the blade, like dense cream or filler. The paste is already spread on the wall of one half of an oak barrel: on the reddish wood with visible grain there is an irregular white smear. The background is blurred on the left; on the right you can see the metal rim of the barrel and a rivet.
This frame is taken from an ad, but the ad's hero himself is not in it. The viewer sees only the process: the paste goes on thickly and confidently, as if it could cover up any flaw.
The barrel was not chosen by chance: a leaking barrel is a common image of a “leaky” situation, where something is draining away. That is why the author of a caption only needs to write the name of the trouble on it for everyone to get the joke.
Product and advertising
Flex Seal is an American brand of sealants and adhesive materials. Its face in the ads is Phil Swift, the energetic host of the videos. Flex Paste, a thick paste for filling gaps, appeared in February 2020, and the video about it went up on YouTube on February 14, 2020, gathering more than five million views within two weeks.
By that time the brand already had its own meme footprint: in the 2017 Flex Tape ad, Swift “sawed” a boat in half and taped it back together, and the phrase “That's a lotta damage!” from the bucket demonstration became a catchphrase. In September 2017, a review of that ad by video blogger JonTron greatly increased its fame. This is the story of Flex Tape, not of the paste.
How the template was born
A day after the video, on February 15, 2020, memes based on frames from the ad began to appear on Reddit, and by February 23 there were many of them. There are two main templates: “paste on the wall” and “paste on the barrel.” In the second, the author captions the barrel with a problem and the paste with whatever it is being “treated” with.
The joke is that the proposed solution is too simple for the problem: a smear of paste will not restore trust, grades or mood, but in the frame it looks so confident that you want to believe it.
Examples for your own caption
On the barrel: “My relationship with the alarm clock.” On the paste: “Five more minutes.” A household problem is cured by a deliberately useless remedy.
On the barrel: “My savings.” On the paste: “Subscription to one more service.” The joke works through a wrong “cure.”
On the barrel: “Broken sleep schedule.” On the paste: “Coffee at 22:00.” Making the problem worse under the guise of a solution.
On the barrel: “Silence at the meeting.” On the paste: “Well, let's discuss this separately.” The familiar office exit.
How to use the template
Clearly separate the two roles: the barrel is the problem, the paste is the solution. The more absurd the solution, the funnier it is, but it should remain plausible in everyday terms.
It is better to make the caption with large, short inscriptions right on the wood and on the white smear. Do not confuse this template with Flex Tape: there the center has a boat and tape, whereas here it is a barrel and thick paste.
You can swap the roles: on the barrel write success, and on the paste whatever gets in its way. Then the meme turns from a joke about a “solution” into a joke about “spoiling.” But most often the classic scheme wins, where the paste is someone's dubious advice.
