About

Maybe The Real Treasure Was the Friends We Made Along the Way is a phrasal template based on the storytelling cliché of the worthless treasure. The phrase generally expresses the idea that the experience of a treasure hunt is more important than the treasure. Online, people replace the word treasure to joke about disappointments in life and culture.

Origin

While the exact origin of the meme is unknown, the earliest available usage of the phrase online was published by an anonymous 4chan ^[5] user wrote, "if that really was the ending it would probably be some sentimental bullshit like THE REAL TREASURE IS THE FRIENDS WE MADE ALONG THE WAY!"

Precursor

Perhaps the most popular example of the cliché comes from the 1985 film Stand By Me, in which a group of pre-teen boys go on a quest to see a dead body. At the end of the film, the story's narrator concludes that their friendship was the most important part of the journey.

On January 29th, 2012, TV Tropes^[1] published an entry on the "Worthless Treasure" cliché.

Spread

On September 19th, 2011, Bodybuilding.com forum^[3] user Nutella! wrote, "it's weird that pirates would go from shore to shore looking for buried treasure when the real treasure was in the friendships they were making" which is the earliest known instance of the tropes use online" (shown below).

Tumblr ^[4] user nyehs on July 21st, 2014. They wrote, "maybe the real aesthetic was the friends we made along the way." The post received more than 19,000 notes (shown below).

On April 13th, 2016, Redditor ^[2] Cousland-Theirin posted a question titled "Where does the "real treasure was the friends we made along the way" meme come from?"

On September 7th, 2018, BuzzFeed Unsolved published the episode "The Treacherous Treasure Hunt of Forrest Fenn." The episode has received more than 5.2 million views in less than one year (shown below).

Following the episode's release, people began posting images from it, adding subtitles that included the lines. For example, on December 2nd, Twitter ^[4] user @percahlia tweeted the template with the caption "every dnd party can be split into two groups." The post received more than 35,000 likes and 11,000 retweets in less than one year (shown below, left). This also inspired an image edit and object labeling series (examples below, center and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References