About

SpongeBob Burning Paper refers to a four-panel exploitable meme template in which SpongeBob SquarePants reads a note then decides to throw the paper into the fire, seemingly rejecting it. It is often used to joke about unwanted truths, similar to the Scroll of Truth meme.

Origin

The panels are originally taken from the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Party Pooper Pants," which aired May 17th, 2002.^[1] In the episode, Patchy the Pirate has invited SpongeBob to a party, but the ink runs on his invitation, causing SpongeBob to quip, "Whoever sent this obviously has no idea about the physical limitations of life underwater. Well, might as well throw these in the fire!"

The earliest known iteration of the picture as a meme was posted on November 25th, 2017, by Imgur user MASHorGTFO,^[2] though they are likely not the original creator of the meme (shown below).

Spread

Over the following years, the image of SpongeBob throwing the piece of paper into the fire was edited into a four-panel exploitable template in which SpongeBob would read something in the first panel, consider it, then decide to burn the paper. On April 17th, 2018, the format appeared in an /r/MemeEconomy^[3] post by WukeyWukey (shown below, left). On April 24th, a Karen meme was posted to Imgur^[4] by user LadySin, gaining over 4,200 views in four years (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References