The statistical trauma is real! This meme captures that moment in math class when someone sees "ab" and interprets it as "a × b" (multiplication), while another person insists it's just a single variable named "ab." Meanwhile, the person in the middle—represented by the crying character at the peak of the bell curve—has absolutely no idea what operation is happening.
It's the perfect representation of mathematical notation confusion that haunts students everywhere. The normal distribution curve in the background is the chef's kiss—suggesting that 34% of people confidently (but possibly incorrectly) interpret the notation one way, 34% interpret it the other way, and the majority in the middle are just confused statistics students having an existential crisis during exams.