LiveLeak Logo Appears

About

LiveLeak Logo Appears refers to a series of memes that imagine a person's reactions in a hypothetical event when a LiveLeak logo has materialized near them, indicating that they are in a LiveLeak video and should expect imminent gruesome death. Popularized on iFunny in early 2019, the format gained wider spread online in 2020 and 2021.

Origin

During the years of video hosting website LiveLeak's activity, the website became known as a destination for surveillance camera videos capturing various fatal incidents, such as videos of industrial incidents, executions and shootings.

Prior to January 2nd, 2019, an unknown iFunny user posted a GIF of Forrest Gump running captioned "when you are walking around in china and you see the liveleak logo appear" (original post could not be discovered; shown below), On January 5th, 2019, Tenor^[1] user akemii reposted the meme.

Spread

Starting on January 2nd, users on iFunny posted multiple GIF captions that imagined a person's reaction in an event when a LiveLeak logo appears near them, indicating that they are in a LiveLeak video and should expect an imminent painful death. On January 2nd, 2019, iFunny^[2] user ShitwardTesticles_2015 posted the first known derivative meme within the trend that gained over 50 smiles in two years (shown below, left). On January 15th, 2019, iFunny^[3] user Kronk posted a GIF caption that received nearly 250 smiles in the same period (shown below, right).

In 2019 and 2020, multiple viral versions of the meme were posted on iFunny, mostly in the form of GIF captions. For example, on April 29th, 2019, iFunny^[4] user Moskau posted a GIF caption that gained over 1,600 smiles in two years (shown below, left). A version posted by iFunny^[5] user Meditations on September 7th, 2019, gained over 1,600 smiles in the same period (shown below, center). On June 28th, 2019, Redditor^[6] Rdbryant25 posted the first known meme within the trend outside of iFunny, with the post gaining over 1,700 upvotes in six months (shown below, right).

On April 15th, 2021, TikTok^[7] user name_brand_kaiju posted a video version of the meme that gained over 3.7 million views and 701,000 likes in two months (shown below).

In the following months, the video received viral spread online through reposts, inspiring more LiveLeak Logo Appears memes on social media.

Various Examples

Le Industrial Accident has arrived pic.twitter.com/AyXs2w68SK

— Zane Schacht, Voice Goblin (@VoicesByZane) June 1, 2021

https://t.co/HmgLE9NaTy pic.twitter.com/bmHVVBZh0j

— Joe (@SilentManJoe) June 3, 2021

Search Interest

External References