Learn/Know the difference, it could save your life

About

While the “Learn the difference, it could save your life” expression is often used on forums and boards to state the differences between two things and, additionally, to express that the interlocutor is wrong on these particular topics, it has usually been in a textual way.

On this webcomic dating from january 2005, the expression is the title of the page itself.
Here the purpose is only to react to a statement in order to clame it wrong.

The comparison could involve pictures, as these occurances in early 2007 showed:

• http://www.wii60.com/forum/showpost.php?s=a7aec43469892ac95421313b78e996c3&p=265440&postcount=32

• http://forum.vgcats.com/showpost.php?s=9d5288d070677f6afdea89a019f4cc12&p=603440&postcount=17465

But there, the textual expression is an addition of the pictures, not a part of it.

Origin

One of the earliest archived instances found so far of “learn the difference” comes from an archived 4chan thread posted July 28th, 2007 in which /b/ discussed Something Awful.

• Thread 34245941 sa goons NSFW

In September the 16th 2007, the first instance of the sentence inside a picture started appearing on Pichaus.com an image hosting website.

It depicted the difference between Mormons and Ninjas in a funny image macro:
Mormon vs Ninja

The picture got its own appeal because of its particular way of expressing discrepancy between two concepts, in a manner not dissimilar from The main difference between Europe and USA though less popular. The picture had gone through several websites before derivatives began to rise.

Use of meme

“Learn the difference, it could save your life”, also seen as “Know the difference, it could save youf life” or, in some cases, “Know the difference” work as demotivationals and are, most of the time, relatively informatives in a humoristic way.
There are usually two pictures, with text sometimes, and the “Learn the difference, it could save your life” line below it.