Clearly the meme is highly effective.

It was highly contagious, that is, it spread widely. But so was the whole “would you still love me if I were a worm” thing and it was “effective” for the same reason: Gals thought “Oh I want a ‘yes’ to that answer that’d be so emotionally satisfying” and guys thought “WTF why would I want a worm if there’s something more behind it why can’t my SO speak plain English”: It spread by exploiting the emotional kick gals get out of tripping over guys for having a particular default interpretation. No, it is not a “wrong” interpretation to think of the question as “rather with a bear or a man like me”. If you don’t want men to interpret the question like that then pose it differently. Simple as that. But then it wouldn’t be as inflammatory and with that not as contagious.

Each and every time one of these things comes around one of two things happens for the average guy: We a) fall right into a trap and then get accused of being insensitive or b) we recognise the trap, lift our hands, walk back slowly, then faster, then even faster, until making a go at the 10km parcour world record. Because yes that kind of shit is a giant red flag.

It’s like those people who are proud of being “brutally honest” but in reality what they care about is not the truth, but the brutality, just from the other side of the gender distribution.