About

Every time you masturbate…God kills a kitten is a popular Internet meme that exists in a variety of forms, usually as a snowclone printed over a photoshopped image macro. While most varieties will retain one or more elements of the original phrase and/or picture, the general form of the meme is "Every time you {VERB}, {NOUN} {VERB}s a {NOUN}".

Origin

According to an article on cardhouse.com^[1] the phrase “Every time you masturbate, God Kills a Kitten” first appeared in print in BarFly magazine^[2] as the image below, prior to the year 2000.

Email from the originator

Thanks for your interest in killing kittens, Chris. Yes, it's true, that popular phrasing (of an old Catholic school joke) was originated by me, and immortalized in the pages of the first issue of BarFly Magazine, which came out in May 1999. It was one of the things that put BarFly on the map! It became an immediate fixture on fridges and backbars in Portland, and several people photocopied it, made stickers (including someone who re-set the type, misspelling masturbate, but leaving the BarFly tag on it, much to my chagrin), and variously disseminated it throughout Portland, and then, the rest of the world.

That image is the same as the one that appeared in the first issue of BarFly, except somone whited out our logo, which appeared to the left of "think about it". I'll send you a scan of the original page, when I'm back in office, later today.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Your pal,

Jen Lane
BarFly

While the image began spreading at a local level IRL, the image eventually found its way to the Internet via email forwards, such as the one mentioned in the cardhouse.com article.

FARK.com photoshop

On November 28, 2002, the phrase was lifted from the original picture and applied to a picture of two Domo-kuns chasing a kitten in a FARK.com photoshop thread. It was largely from this version that the meme grew to world-wide popularity. Google Insights for Search shows that "every time you masturbate" has shown a steady decrease since at least 2004, but does continue to show some interest.

Domo

The "Every time you masturbate" meme is sometimes cited as the vehicle by which Domo-kun was introduced to the United States. Domo-kun first appeared in December 1998 as a mascot for Japan's NHK Television^[4], where he was used until 2004. (You can read more about Domo-kun's memetic influence on Know Your Meme's Domo page.

Spread

Over time, the phrase has become popular enough that in addition to appearing on sites like FARK and 4chan, it has been used by a religious anti-porn web site^[5] and inspired the naming of an IRL Scottish sex party company^[6].

Notable examples

 

 

External References

^[1] Cardhouse – Domokun FAQ

^[2] BarFly magazine

^[3] FARK.com – Photoshop a porn addiction 'Get Well' card…

^[4] Wikipedia – Domo

^[5] XXXchurch.com

^[6] Daily Record – Killing Kittens sex parties…