He Ate 71 Pounds of Sand And Died

About

He Ate 71 Pounds of Sand And Died refers to a catchphrase attached to an image macro of a cat with its mouth slightly open, joking that it died after eating "71 pounds of sand." The image macro was posted to Twitter in November 2020 and went viral through reposts over the following years, inspiring new image macros using the same catchphrase. The format is similar to the He Was Forced To Eat Cement meme.

Origin

On November 17th, 2020, Twitter^[1] user @flseaui created a Twitter thread where she posted screenshots of her Twitter Fleets. That day she posted an image macro showing an orange cat captioned, "He ate 71 pounds of sand and died" to the thread (shown below). This is the earliest known post of the meme.

Spread

The image macro received viral spread in early 2022. On January 16th, 2022, Twitter^[2] user @ghostingellery posted it in reaction to a tweet by Matt Watson, gaining over 150 likes in two months. On January 19th, Twitter^[3] artist @_RowYourGoat_ posted a commissioned piece of art showing a furry character with the caption (shown below). It was posted by Tumblr^[4] user inky-things that same day.

On February 25th, Instagram^[5] user possiblypolly reposted the original meme, gaining over 94,000 likes in two weeks. On February 27th, Instagram^[6] user transangelicizm posted a version of the meme using the caption over an image of Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, gaining over 200 likes in two weeks (shown below).

On March 4th, Twitter^[7] user @CatTikToks posted an image using a photoshop of the cat from the original meme with an arrow pointing to its belly, captioned, "full of 71 pounds of sand," gaining over 2,100 likes and 390 retweets in six days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References