About

Potential to Do the Funniest Thing of All Time, also written Chance to Do the Funniest Thing and Opportunity to Do the Funniest Thing, is a catchphrase used in various social media posts that describe situations in which a person presumably has a chance to do "the funniest thing in history," often by repeating famous past events. Originally straightforward, in April 2022 the meme format mutated to deliberately include much ambiguity and have readers guessing what is meant, becoming a form of engagement bait.

Origin

On August 19th, 2021, Twitter^[1] user @nameshiv shared a news snippet about Ever Given. the container ship which caused the March 2021 Suez Canal Jam, passing through the Suez Canal for the first time since the incident. On the same day, Twitter^[2] user @IronsparkSyris quote tweeted the post, commenting, "right now, this captain is staring out the window, thinking about how he has an opportunity to do the single funniest thing that anyone has ever done," implying that the captain could intentionally block the canal again. The tweet (shown below, left) gained over 150 retweets and 520 likes in two years. Later that year, on December 9th, 2021, Twitter^[3] user @KT_So_It_Goes made a similar joke that gained over 7,400 retweets and 46,900 likes in two years (shown below, right).

Spread

In the following years, more users posted similar jokes about opportunities to repeat something that happened in the past. For example, on September 21st, 2022, Twitter^[4] user @IwriteOK quipped about Queen Elizabeth II's death. The tweet (shown below) gained over 1,900 retweets and 22,200 likes in seven months.

On March 29th, 2023, Twitter^[5] user @MNateShyamalan made a joke about Pixar's short film Carl's Date. The joke implied that Carl, the deuteragonist of Pixar's film Up, would lose his romantic partner again,^[6] however, multiple users online made other suggestions, such as Carl going on a date with a dog.^[7] The tweet gained over 2,800 retweets and 86,600 likes in two weeks (shown below).

The tweet inspired more intentionally ambiguous Potential to Do the Funniest Thing memes to be posted in the following days. For example, on April 6th, Twitter^[8] user @JUNlPER made a tweet that gained over 6,800 retweets and 207,900 likes in four days (shown below, left). On April 7th, 2023, Twitter^[9] user @upblissed made a tweet that received over 15,000 retweets and 245,200 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References