About

Larry the Lobster "Observe" is a memorable quote uttered by the character Larry the Lobster on the American animated television SpongeBob SquarePants. Online, people use a screenshot of the character saying the line as the punchline to various jokes about proudly exemplifying undesirable attributes (similar to Hold My Beer).

Origin

On July 17th, 1999, the episode of SpongeBob SquarePants "Ripped Pants" aired in the United States.^[1] In the episode, Larry the Lobster (voiced by Doug Lawrence) shows off the amount of weight he can lift and confidently says "observe" before doing so (clip below).

On May 9th, 2019, Redditor ^[2] awkwardrook posted the earliest known variation of the line as a meme. They uploaded a screenshot from the episode as the response from "white kids on XBox live" to the comment "Hey, you're not black, you're not allowed to say the n-word." The post received more than 19,000 points (97% upvoted) and 115 comments (shown below).

Spread

That day, Redditor^[3] rjschwerin posted the meme in the /r/BikiniBottomTwitter, where it received 5,000 points (97% upvoted) and 40 comments.

The following day, Redditor^[4] Skullcrusher96 posted a variation in the /r/dankmemes subreddit. In this case, the image is used as the response from BuzzFeed and PETA to the statement "You can't get literally every human alive to hate you." The post received more than 10,000 points (97% upvoted) and 40 comments in 24 hours (shown below, left).

Over the next 24 hours, the meme continued to spread throughout /r/dankmemes and /r/BikiniBottomTwitter (examples below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References