About

Steven Universe "How To" Book refers to an exploitable image series based on scene from the American cartoon series Steven Universe. The image features the character Steven reading a "How to" book and studying step one and step two of the instructions. Online, people replace the name of the book and the steps for humorous effect.

Origin

The images of Steven Universe looking at the book is a series of three screen captures from the season two episode of the series, "Sworn to the Sword, which first aired on June 15th, 2015 (clip below, left). In the episode, Steven reads a book called "How to Talk to People," which instructs, "Step 1: Think of what to say" and "Step 2: Say it."^[1]

Hours after the episode aired, people online began manipulating the scene's images and sharing the results. One of the earliest known examples was published on June 16th by Tumblr ^[2] user tindabox, who edited the steps to read "Step 1: Git" and "Step 2: Gud." The post (shown below, right) received more than 10,000 notes in three years.

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Spread

Later that day, FunnyJunk ^[3] user udo posted an image from the series, photoshopping actor Shia LaBeouf's head over Steven's to reference the Shia Labeouf's Do It meme. The post (shown below) received more than 480 upvotes in three years.

Less than one week later, on June 21st, MemeCenter^[4] user bakoahmed posted a three-panel variaton that reads "Step 1: Scream like an idiot," "Step 2: Don't" and "How to Make Videows Like Pewdiepie." The post (shown below, left) received more than 1,100 likes in three years.

On July 2nd, 2018, a template of the meme was posted by Redditor ^[5] funlovingzombiefroll on the /r/MemeEconomy subreddit. The post (shown below, right) received more than 1,100 points (96% upvoted) and 575 comments in 24 hours. The post led to more uses of the format on the /r/dankmemes subreddit (example below, right)

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References