Gun to Your Head

About

Gun to Your Head refers to a social media game participants of which request others to answer a tricky question, such as name a quote from certain media or recite lyrics of a song by heart. The posts are often accompanied by a stock image of a person with a gun pointed at their head and the question "do you survive?"

Origin

On June 29th, 2016, Twitter^[1] user @JuicedUpJam (previously @JamariSelders) posted a series of six questions for his subscribers. In one of the questions, @JuicedUpJam asked whom they would call if they had a gun pointed at their head, considering that if the person didn't pick up they would be left alive. The tweet received 150 retweets, 6,000 quote tweets and 260 likes in five years (shown below).

Spread

In the following weeks, the tweet received viral spread online through reposts on other social media, primarily Facebook. On July 30th, 2016, Facebook^[2] user Jojo Packard posted a screenshot of @JuicedUpJam's tweet, with the post gaining five reactions and 83,000 shares in five years. On July 1st, 2016, Facebook^[3] page United States Memes /K/orps posted a screenshot of the tweet which received over 710 reactions and 3,400 shares in the same period.

On January 9th, 2017, the official Facebook^[4] page of Hot 97.3 radio station reposted the earliest derivative meme based on the format, with the caption altered to a request to perfectly recite one song (author unknown; shown below). The post received over 7,300 reactions and 145,000 shares in four years.

Between 2017 and 2021, a number of versions of the meme, including macros based on the original tweet and versions requesting to recite a song by a particular artist, were circulated on Facebook,^[5] Twitter^[6][7] and other sites (examples shown below).

2021 Resurgence

On July 27th, 2021, Twitter^[8] user @Nmalik2002 posted a version of the meme that requested to name an iconic line said by the Marvel character Wanda Maximoff. The tweet received over 350 quote tweets and 840 likes in six days (shown below, left). The tweet inspired more similar versions posted on the same day. Later on July 27th, 2021, Twitter^[9] user @enbyrogers posted a version of the meme about Captain America with a proviso that his two most popular lines could not be used (shown below, right). The tweet gained over 120 retweets and 4,500 likes in six days.

The tweet prompted more, similar posts requesting lines by various characters to be quoted apart from their most famous lines. For example, on July 29th, Twitter^[10] user @arcade1978 posted a tweet that gained over 360 retweets, 4,000 quote tweets and 5,100 likes in four days (shown below, left). On July 31st, Twitter^[11] user @DynamoSupeX posted a meme that received over 360 retweets, 1,600 quote tweets and 8,300 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References