About

Comedy Genius refers to a four-panel comic by artist Shen Comix. Online, the comic has been circulated as an exploitable, usually with the purpose of mocking cliché jokes.

Origin

On June 5th, comic artist Shenanigansen posted a four panel comic titled "Comedy Genius" which parodied a trope of hiding a Loss reference in four-panel images. The comic itself can also be interpreted as a reference to Loss. The comic gained over 8,700 retweets and 53,900 likes on Twitter^[1], over 1,100 upvotes on Reddit^[2] and over 88,600 likes and reblogs on Tumblr^[3] in three weeks.

Spread

On the same day, the comic has been posted to multiple subreddits, including posts in /r/funny^[4] and /r/me_irl.^[5]

In the following days, the comic gained a moderate presence on the platform as a meme template. For example, on June 6th, Redditor Friendly_Nibba posted an edit to /r/PewdiepieSubmissions which gained 22 upvotes in two weeks (shown below, left).^[6] On June 7th, Redditor CADborted posted a bone hurting version of the meme which gained over 6,000 upvotes in two weeks (shown below, right).^[7]

In many variations, an image of a trashcan is edited in the first panel of the comic.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References