There’s something so elegant about minimalism, which is why it’s amusing when something extremely inelegant, like Internet memes, are giving a boost of class through something so simple as taking elements away. Behold, the classiest Internet memes you’ve ever seen, told through the art of minimalist movie posters. More after the jump.

Ray Thomas has a dream, one in which he makes a deck of standard playing cards, but each card features an image macro, one of the more common Internet memes. There are certainly enough image macros to spread across 52 separate cards, so all Thomas needs is the money to produce them. Welcome to life, Thomas. Luckily for Thomas (and us), there’s this website called Kickstarter that is pretty well-known for kickstarting projects in need of funds. Ray Thomas is seeking to pledge $4,200 by February 16, a price quoted to him by card manufacturers, to make all of his (and our) image macro playing card dreams come true.

Back in February 2010, a video was taken of a 67-year-old white man, Thomas Bruso, getting into a fight with a black man on a bus due to what seemed to be an argument based on a racial misunderstanding. The 67-year-old man, after trying to avoid any kind of confrontation by moving to another seat on the other side of the bus, happened to be wearing a shirt that said, “I am a motherf**ker,” and despite his efforts to avoid the fight, got into one anyway. The man he was fighting with actually threw the first punch, but then surprisingly, Bruso quickly jumped out of his seat and subdued the man via a flurry of punches, earning the Internet title of “Epic Beard Man.” His shirt obviously helped garner the Internet’s attention. Now, it seems Danny Trejo will be in a movie entitled Bad Ass inspired by Bruso, trailer above.

Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop rose to meme prominence fairly quickly. We chose to focus on him casually pepper spraying great works of art, because we felt his tour through art was funnier and more compelling than the majority of the meme, which just shoved him into any old situation. However, his appearance in DOOM is extremely clever, in that some trickster took a bit of time and care morphing the space marine on DOOM’s cover into the cop, weird upside-down hand and all.

Developed by Ben Stone, the program Instant Elevator Music plays music whenever a user is waiting for a process to finish on his or her computer. Modding the program, Stone was able to slap a Nyan Cat into the progress bar, replacing the now old and busted soothing green bar. Currently, the Nyan bar only works in Windows 7, and Stone says it won’t work in Windows XP and there’s also a chance that the bar will only work properly with the Windows File Explorer. Head on past the break to see a video of the bar in action.

Not only does answer engine Wolfram Alpha know the lyrics to the Shaft theme, but it now makes us feel like jerks by defining the term “meme” as “inside jokes for people who have no friends with whom to have real inside jokes.” Are you aware that quoting Encyclopedia Dramatic just makes you part of the problem? Are you aware that you’re becoming a meme, Wolfram Alpha? Hm? Are you?!

(Wolfram Alpha via reddit via Blame it on the Voices)

The iconic children’s book series by Roger Hargreaves, Mr. Men, otherwise known as that weird cartoon that insomniacs happen upon because it is now six in the morning and they left the television on, has been updated to reflect modern times. You know, by turning them into rage faces. Head on past the break to see the full set.

Rocketboom teaches us the origin of the ever-nyaning Nyan Cat. Turns out Nyan Cat wasn’t born of a freak accident involving a toxic sewage explosion at a Pop-Tarts factory and a cat.

(Rocketboom via Laughing Squid)

Reddit user johnfactorial and his girlfriend paint memes and hang them around their house. Though the paintings are pretty enough, johnfactorial and his girlfriend lose a couple of points for not hanging them in hilariously appropriate areas. Philosoraptor (or OMG Rage Face, for that matter) over the toilet? Socially Awkward Penguin over the computer? Socially Awesome Penguin over the front door that can be seen when leaving the house? Location has a place in comedy too! Head on past the break to see some more of the fine, topical artwork.

Everyone has terrible college memories about the questionable things their teachers sometimes did, regardless of how good said teacher actually was overall. While some of us were wondering exactly what our lit teachers just did to us, other students had teachers whose very field didn’t involve the intricacies of clear, concise communication. Everyone knew an engineer major while they were in school. This is what those poor souls had to suffer.