About

Shut the Fuck Up, Liberal also known as Silence, Liberal is a catchphrase used by both conservatives and far-left internet users most often realized in image macros where a character with glowing eyes is firing a laser beam. One of the most popular iterations of this shows a crab firing the laser. This image has been used as a snowclone as people have changed the word "liberal" to other things.

Origin

One of the earliest known posts of the phrase in an image macro appeared on /pol/ on December 10th, 2016,^[5] using an edited image of Daiei Film's turtle monster Gamera.

Spread

The format continued to spread on 4chan over the following years, including many different characters and catchphrases (examples shown below).

Crab Edit

The image of the glowing-eyes crab first appeared on ShitpostBot 5000 on August 27th, 2017 (shown below, left).^[3] This was posted to /r/cursedimages^[4] on July 9th, 2018. On September 28th, 2018, the image of the crab firing a laser with the text "Silence, Liberal" was uploaded to KnowYourMeme by user Artichoke, who reported that the image was discovered on Discord in a message correspondence (shown below, right).

The image saw some use on Twitter and Reddit in the ensuing months. Initially, it was used by far left-leaning communities criticizing liberalism. Examples include an October 19th, 2018 Twitter post by @ohbermuda^[1] in response to a CNN tweet about a woman leading the US Army and a November 7th, 2018 post to /r/completeanarchy.^[2]

One of the most popular iterations of this image has been used in response to brands on social media attempting to appear relatable via memes (shown below, left). Funyuns parodied this in a tweet where a bag of Funyuns shot another bag of chips saying "Silence, blands" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References