About

Swear Jar refers to an exploitable image of two jars. The first jar, labeled "Swear Jar," has significantly less money in it than the second jar, which is labeled with an action the poster does frequently. The second jar is often connected to a specific fandom, showing the poster's enthusiasm for the subculture.

Origin

A swear jar is an object intended to discourage the use of profanity.^[1] When a person uses profanity, they will have to put a certain amount of money into the swear jar. Examples of the Swear Jar template date back to 2011. On June 7th, 2011, TV Tropes user SalFishFin posted an illustrated version of what would become the meme with Monty Python over the second jar (shown below, left). The meme began growing popular several years later with a photograph of jars. On June 30th, 2017, Tumblr user secret-knight^[2] posted the first example of the template, with "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Reference Jar" over the second jar. The post gained over 12,000 notes (shown below, right).

Spread

The post began to circulate with various other labels on the second jar in the coming weeks, particularly on Tumblr and Reddit. On July 4th, 2017, a variation was posted to /r/MemeEconomy^[3] which replaced the second jar with "Veggietales References." It gained 249 points (shown below, left). On July 19th, 2017, Tumblr user tinysaurus-rex^[4] posted a version that gained over 5,900 points (shown below, right). On July 31st, 2017, memedocumentation^[5] documented the meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References