The Joker Actually Said “We Live In A Society” And The Internet Can’t Deal

In case you thought the saga of Zack Snyder’s fabled Justice League cut couldn’t get any more absurd, the film’s first official trailer has finished with Jared Leto’s Joker saying “we live in a society.” The line has for quite some time been a meme associated with the Joker. Until this day no iteration of the character has actually said the line.

What Does The Joker’s Line Signify?

According to its Know Your Meme page, “we live in a society” is a line associated with the Gamers Rise Up/Gamer Joker meme that arose around 2016, when Leto’s form of the Joker was first released. The meme features various forms of the Joker, as well as photographs of various individuals wearing their own adaptations of Joker’s makeup, paired with tense or cringey text.

“We live in a society” is quite possibly the most well-known iterations of the meme, with the line apparently originating from a 1991 scene of Seinfeld. The line has since seen broader popularity outside of the Joker-explicit meme, however it was as yet associated with the character sufficient that an appeal to have Joaquin Phoenix say the line in the 2019 Joker film gained almost 60,000 signatures.

Why Joker Says So?

While the meme is often used to make fun of comic book nerds, the line appearing in the Snyder Cut is meta enough that its fans apparently couldn’t care less. Reactions have ranged from mistrust to appreciation of what some see as significant level trolling on Snyder’s part. Leto is also playing into the meme, with his retweet of the trailer basically reading “we live in a society.”

The actual line in the trailer doesn’t duplicate the meme exactly, with the Joker telling Batman “we live in a society where honor is a distant memory,” yet the intention is still clear. The Joker didn’t appear in the original cut of Justice League, and it’s impossible he’ll have a large job in the Snyder Cut, as a couple of moments of new footage was purportedly shot for the cut.