About

Show Us Your Story is an exploitable image of a human body shown from the front and back that prompts the viewer to mark areas that were harmed over their lifetime. Used on DeviantArt since 2011, the meme format first achieved virality across 4chan and Tumblr in 2014 and spawned a parody trend on Twitter in May 2023.

Origin

On December 8th, 2011, DeviantArt^[1] user Daisiesinbloom posted a stock drawing of a human body shown from the front and back captioned "show us your story" and offered the viewer to mark it with different colors representing types of harm, including red for self-harm, purple for burn scars, pink for animal incidents and blue for surgeries (shown below). The original author of the image and where and when it was first posted are currently unconfirmed.

Spread

The trend achieved initial popularity on DeviantArt in 2012. For example, on August 1st, 2012, DeviantArt^[2] user Scorchfur18 posted a version that received over 3,700 views in 11 years (shown below, left). On December 9th, 2012, DeviantArt^[3] user RaddRebel posted their version that gained over 4,700 views in a similar period.

On June 28th, 2014, an unknown 4chan user posted the template in a /b/ thread, with other users filling and sharing their versions (example shown below, left). On that day, an anonymous user posted the earliest found humorous edit of the exploitable (shown below, right). Later on June 28th, Know Your Meme^[4][5] user 🅱ank 🅱ill and others archived several images from the thread on the site, with 🅱ank 🅱ill also starting a forum^[6] thread for the template.

The format saw further spread on Tumblr, Twitter and 4chan in the following years, with humorous examples being occasionally shared. For example, on March 29th, 2016, an anonymous 4chan user posted a humorous version in a /b/^[7] thread (shown below, left). On August 3rd, an anonymous 4chan user shared^[8] a version referencing villain Two-Face from Batman (shown below, right).

The image resurfaced as a parody format on Twitter in May 2023 after Twitter^[9] user @YourkshireReborn posted an edit on May 19th, 2023, referencing the character Frieza from Dragon Ball (shown below, left) that gained over 130 retweets and 2,100 likes in three weeks. For example, on June 2nd, 2023, Twitter^[10] user @pileofants posted a humorous version captioned "my tragic story 💔💔💔." The tweet (shown below, right) garnered over 890 retweets and 12,900 likes in five days.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References