It's Evolving, Just Backwards

About

It's Evolving, Just Backwards refers to a reaction image featuring PewDiePie saying the phrase. It is often paired with images illustrating a comparison between how things once and how they are today, with the implication that how things are today is worse.

Origin

On October 15th, 2019, PewDiePie posted an "LWIAY" episode in which he looked at submissions from his subreddit. In response to an image showing an artistic rendering of a dinosaur and a pixelated dinosaur, PewDiePie said, "It's evolving, just backwards" (shown below).

Spread

After the episode aired, fans began using the moment as a reaction image. User DaHumaan^[5] posted the first example, gaining over 53,000 points (shown below).

User Tacolover132 posted a botched Ligma meme with the image on October 21st, 2019 in /r/PewDiePieSubmissions,^[1] gaining over 12,000 points (shown below, left). On November 8th, Redditor charleslovesbrownies posted an example in /r/memes^[2] that gained over 7,600 likes.

Popular examples on other subreddits include posts by CuntCunt312^[3] in /r/dankmemes that gained over 1,700 points (shown below, left) and a meta version posted on /r/anitmeme^[4] that gained over 170 points (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References