About

But If You Close Your Eyes are the lyrics of the chorus of the 2013 song "Pompeii" by English band Bastille. The song's chorus became a meme in August 2020 after being used in videos of countries and regions disappearing from maps in a similar fashion to the what if it was all just a dream? meme.

Origin

The song "Pompeii" was released by Bastille on January 11th, 2013. The song's music video was uploaded to YouTube on January 20th of that year, where it accumulated over 570 million views in seven and a half years (shown below).^[1]

On July 26th, 2020, Reddit user tacolle posted a video to r/okbuddyretard showing the island of Great Britain disappearing as Pompeii's chorus plays with the caption "CLOSE YOUR EYES IT'S NOT THERE" (shown below).^[2] The video gained over 5,800 upvotes in a month.

🎧🩸😳 from r/okbuddyretard

On July 29th, YouTube user c0mmie, TheGulags 2b2t Official uploaded tacolle's video (shown below, left).^[3] A similar video showing Malaysia disappearing was uploaded on August 9th by Serg (shown below, right).^[4] Neither video gained a significant amount of views.

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Spread

Pompeii's chorus "But If You Close Your Eyes" became a meme in August 2020 after being used in several videos of countries and regions disappearing from maps. On August 11th, YouTuber Textile George uploaded a video in which France disappears from a map of Europe (shown below, left).^[5] It gained over 8,000 views in two weeks. On the same day, BREN BREN BREN uploaded a similar video but with the United Kingdom (shown below, right).^[6]

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Various Examples

External References