The 'Mental Gymnastics' cartoon meme features a stick-figure athlete performing an incredibly complex and exhausting series of maneuvers to reach a conclusion, while a straight, simple path lies right next to them. This visual metaphor perfectly captures cognitive dissonance—the psychological phenomenon where people invent elaborate excuses to avoid a simple, uncomfortable truth. Popularized across social media to mock everything from political spin to personal relationship excuses, this meme highlights the 'Olympic-level' effort people put into defending flawed logic. It is the go-to template for calling out someone who is overcomplicating a situation just to stay in denial.