About

Stick Figure Violence refers to an exploitable image macro of six stick figure cartoons that are bloody, gruesome and committing violent acts of murder and cannibalism against each other. Meme creators put text in the middle of the cartoons, using the stick figures surrounding the text to demonstrate how they or other groups of people emotionally react to the scenarios they've described. The cartoons resemble other, brutalist stick figure templates like Check Out How Hard I Can Pee from 2018. Although the six cartoons were created separately on platforms like Tumblr, the six cartoons weren't compiled into one template until November 2021 on Instagram.

Origin

The six separate cartoons were created on platforms like Tumblr before November 2021. For instance, the bottom left cartoon circulated on Tumblr^[1] in May 2021. Another example was posted on October 3rd, 2021, by Tumblr^[2] blog death2america, which received roughly 1,300 notes over two months.

The cartoons were edited into one image macro on November 1st, 2021, by Instagram^[3] account @hollowcloth, who created the template. This original meme (shown below) had text in the middle that read, "girls when they're in love." The post received roughly 5,700 likes over the course of one month.

Spread

On November 4th, 2021, @hollowcloth's meme was reposted to Tumblr^[4] by the blog caenus. It received roughly 19,200 notes over the course of one month.

The template received its first remix on Twitter on November 10th, 2021. Twitter^[5] user @iztea_ posted a meme (shown below) that replaced some of the words in the meme so it instead read, "artists when they have a drawing idea." The tweet received roughly 101,400 likes over the course of three weeks.

Another notable variant was posted by Instagram^[11] account @thisisafleshprison on November 10th, 2021. The meme (shown below) replaced all the text in the meme to instead read, "me when it's time to set a healthy and reasonable boundary." The post received roughly 12,900 likes over the course of three weeks. The aforementioned meme, in particular, was exploited separately going into November 2021, with many subsequent variants of the format starting with "me when" rather than the original "girls when they're."

On November 11th, 2021, Tumblr^[6] blog bluegreysong replaced all the words in the image except for the word "girls," inserting a reference to Taylor Swift. The meme (shown below) received 203 notes in one month and is the first known variant on Tumblr.

Memes using the template appeared primarily on Tumblr^[7] and Twitter^[8] going into the rest of November 2021. Further iterations involved jokes about picking a movie to watch and the TV show Succession, among other examples. The template also spread to platforms like Reddit ^[9] and iFunny ^[10] in late November 2021.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References