About

Sisyphus Puns, also known as Greek Mythology Puns or I Had A Joke About Sisyphus, refers to a series of tweets made in mid-August 2021 in which users make puns and jokes about characters from Greek mythology, with a particular focus on Sisyphus, a figure who was punished to forever roll a boulder up a hill as punishment for cheating death. The puns stemmed from a July 3st Tweet, and often follow a Snowclone format reading, "I had a joke about X, but…"

Origin

On July 31st, 2021, Twitter^[1] user @CSMFHT posted, "I used to tell a joke about Orpheus and Eurydice, but looking back, it was not a great idea," referencing the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which a musician named Orpheus travels to the underworld to make a deal with Hades to bring back his dead wife. The deal is, if Orpheus can walk to earth from the underworld without looking back, she comes back. He ultimately fails and is not reunited with her until he himself dies.^[2] The tweet gained over 65,000 likes and 18,000 retweets in just under three weeks (shown below).

Spread

On August 18th, 2021, Twitter users began quote-tweeting the tweet with their own jokes and puns about figures from Greek Mythology relating to their most well-known stories. For example, on that date, Twitter^[4] user @NMamatas posted a joke about the Delphic Oracle's prophecy being funny because it's true, gaining over 790 likes in a day (shown below, left). On the same date, Twitter^[5] user @scalzi posted "I used to tell a joke about Cassandra, but nobody ever listened," gaining over 1,900 likes in a day. The joke references the story of Cassandra, whose prophecies were deemed untrustable by Apollo as a form of revenge, despite being true every time, resulting in nobody listening to her accurate predictions of events like the Fall of Troy.^[3]

Twitter users continued to quote-tweet Greek Mythology puns over the course of the 18th and 19th, causing a number of Greek mythological characters to trend on Twitter (shown below), including Sisyphus, who received a large number of jokes about his story.

Sisyphus is a figure in Greek mythology who was punished for cheating death twice by being forced to eternally roll a boulder up a hill only to have it fall every time. Numerous Twitter users made jokes referencing this story (examples shown below).

On August 19th, Mashable^[6] and the Daily Dot^[7] reported on the trend specifically focusing on Sisyphus puns.

Various Examples

Search Interest

[Unavailable]

External References