About

Sometimes… Things That Are Expensive… Are Worse is a quote from the YouTube series The Gay And Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo. It grew into a popular reaction image on Tumblr in July of 2017.

Origin

The quote comes from episode 4 of The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo by Bryan Jordan Alvarez. It was posted to YouTube on February 27th, 2017 and has gained over 155,000 views as of July 24th, 2017. The scene in question features the character Freckle talking to Caleb about two guys she invited over to her room the previous night (scene shown below).

Spread

The scene began spreading on Tumblr in July of 2017. On July 6th, 2017, Tumblr user @hyrude^[1] posted the scene to his Tumblr with the caption "tell me why this budgetless gay youtube series made for fun by a group of friends has the best editing and writing of anything i’ve watched in a year. also tell me how this single scene can contain every single one of the top three most iconic lines in history." The post gained over 217,000 notes. After that, the line "Sometimes… Things That Are Expensive… Are Worse" began to grow into a reaction image and snowclone on the site used to refer to various different things that "are worse." Some of the most popular edits in which it is used as a reaction image include a post by astralcaptain^[2] comparing the budget of Sky High to The Avengers, gaining over 59,000 notes (shown below, left). A post by chirrutbaze^[3] applying the post to a scene from the original Star Wars film gained over 7,200 notes (shown below, right).

The image has also become a popular snowclone in which either the original reaction image is edited to give a different message or people use the phrase as a snowclone in text posts. Of the former, one popular example posted by sober-ii^[4] fits the phrase "I'm Gay" into the image. That post gained over 19,000 notes (shown below, left). Of the latter, a post by quxnce^[5] crossing the line with What She Says, What She Means gained over 18,000 notes (shown below, right). The meme was documented by Meme Documentation on July 21st, 2017.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References