Slapping Bags of Rice

About

Slapping Bags of Rice refers to a common urge many people hold to slap large bags of rice when passing them in the store. The shared idea spread on Twitter starting in 2013 but became a larger topic of conversation on Tumblr in 2018 due to popular image shared on Reddit.

Origin

On November 20th, 2013, Twitter user @stephie34^[1] posted the first known reference to the urge online by tweeting, "Slapping a bag of rice is rather therapeutic" (shown below).

Spread

On May 28th, 2018, YouTubers Mely and Gabe posted a video of themselves slapping large bags of rice at the supermarket (shown below). The video gained over 700 views in a year.

On October 25th, Twitter user @stayfrea_^[2] accumulated over 41,800 likes in a year on their tweet, "Who else smack the bag of rice in the supermarket 😭😭😭😭😭" (shown below).

On October 27th, Redditor julphi posted an the trying to hold a fart next to a cute girl in class image next to bags of rice with the caption "Trying not to slap the bags of rice at supermarkets like" to r/memes^[3](shown below, left). The image gained over 5,000 points (98% upvoted) in a year. The next day, the Tumblr^[4] account dankmemeuniversity reposted the image and received over 301,600 notes in a year. Over time people began sharing Tumblr users' replies to the image. On July 10th, 2019, Redditor LordOfFlames posted two replies to r/tumblr^[5] which acknowledged that slapping the bags has zero repercussions and that a supermarket employee endorses the action (shown below, right). The post accumulated over 3,300 points (99% upvoted) in three months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References