About

SpongeBob Roller Coaster is a screencap from the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants in which SpongeBob, Patrick and a baby are riding a kiddie roller coaster and screaming at the top of its only incline. The image is originally from the episode "Roller Cowards" when SpongeBob and Patrick go to Glove World and ride the Mitten. The image was used in memes on Twitter and elsewhere as a way to mock people who over-react or over-dramatize a situation or belief that's seen as not scary, intense or serious by others. The reaction image gained infamy in 2023, labeled as one of the most hated images on Twitter by some.

Origin

On July 27th, 2007, season 5, episode 6a of SpongeBob SquarePants titled "Roller Cowards" aired on American television.^[1] The episode involved SpongeBob and Patrick going to the amusement park Glove World where they got too scared to ride the park's most intense roller coaster, the Fiery Fist O' Pain. In one scene, the two decide to go on the kid's roller coaster instead called the Mitten. They board the cart with a baby and go over one small incline where they scream (YouTube^[2] upload shown below).

The first-known, memetic usage of the scene was a YouTube Poop posted by YouTuber^[3] SPEYEDURTHESECOND on July 23rd, 2009, called, "spongebob and patrick ride the fist of mama luigi," gaining roughly 44,500 views in 14 years.

Despite early usage in video content, the SpongeBob Roller Coaster meme didn't become a viable trend until its usage as an image. For instance, the earliest discovered memes to use the screencap were posted to Instagram^[4] in 2016, evident in reposts to a Buzzfeed ^[5] listicle on August 30th, 2016. These early Instagram posts have since been deleted but followed a two-panel format that compared the Fiery Fist O' Pain to the Mitten (shown below).

Despite usage in 2016, the SpongeBob Roller Coaster meme didn't become highly prevalent until 2022. On March 24th, 2022, Redditor TwelviePostz posted a screencap of the Mitten scene to /r/rollercoasterjerk,^[6] gaining over 130 upvotes in one year. Then, on April 2nd, 2022, Twitter^[7] user @JohnnySpittin used an identical screenshot, captioning it, "'Jujutsu kaisen is PEAK' / The peak:" gaining roughly 4,800 likes in one year (shown below).

Spread

Twitter^[7] user @JohnnySpittin's post quickly inspired others to use the format, such as Twitter^[8] user @CrippledPasta later on April 2nd, 2022, gaining over 3,700 likes for a reply. On April 7th, 2022, Twitter^[9] user @BreckinMathias tweeted the image to symbolize people who thought the NSFW Bowling Animations were "the most messed up things I've seen online," gaining roughly 159,200 likes in one year (shown below, left). The format then spread to Reddit, evident in a post shared by Redditor xatcat2212 to /r/moviescirclejerk^[10] on May 7th, that read, "the gore in multiverse of madness was pretty intense," gaining roughly 9,200 upvotes in one year (shown below, right).

Going into 2023, the image gained infamy, evident in a tweet sent by Twitter^[11] user @KirbyCheatFurby on January 19th, 2023, that read, "petition to ban this image from online use" receiving roughly 5,500 likes in six months (shown below, left). Around the same time, the image gained mass usage in quote retweets in which people would caption another person's tweet with the image as a way to mock them. For instance, on June 6th, 2023, Twitter^[12] user @kirawontmiss QRT'd a British person who said that Americans "wouldn't last 2 seconds" in the then-recent British heatwave, gaining roughly 128,400 likes in one month (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References