LOS ANGELES — Comcast and Time Warner Cable regularly rank at the bottom of the pay TV industry when it comes to customer satisfaction. So it didn’t take long for customers to vent frustrations online over high prices, spotty service and fears of a monopoly after Comcast announced its $45 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable.

Outrage that these two big cable companies would join hands to form an even more massive entity spurred a cascade of sarcastic tweets and satirical memes: the killer Death Star battle station from “Star Wars,” the evil Eye of Sauron from “The Lord of the Rings,” and a “South Park” snippet where character Eric Cartman and friends are tormented by cable employees before a logo curiously similar to Time Warner Cable’s own.

Consumers weren’t buying the assertion of Comcast CEO Brian Roberts that the combination, which will have 30 million TV and Internet subscribers, would be “pro-consumer and pro-competitive.”