About

That Post Gave Me Cancer is an image macro series based on images of various characters lying sick in bed or otherwise looking unwell, captioned "That post gave me cancer." The catchphrase, usually used in the comments to various posts, indicates that the content posted was of such poor quality that it infected the reader with "cancer," a slang term that is typically used on 4chan to express one's disgust towards a trend or a thread.

Origin

On January 18th, 1969, episode 19 "To Cage a Spider" of season two of the 1967 series Spider-Man, colloquially known as 60's Spider-Man, premiered.^[3] In one scene of the episode, Spider-Man is shown lying on a sickbed at a hospital.

Starting at least as early as November 2007, the word "cancer" has been used as a metaphor for poor quality content on 4chan's /b/ and other boards. The spread of the word is mostly associated with the popularization of the phrase The Cancer That Is Killing /b/.

In April 2009, Marvel started streaming episodes of 60's Spider-Man. In the following months, the show gained viral popularity among users on 4chan's /co/ board, with users posting threads with still images from the show, with users also making image macros based on it. In one of such threads, an anonymous user created an image macro based a still image of Spider-Man lying sick in bed from the episode "To Cage a Spider" of the series, captioning it "That Post Gave Me Cancer" (shown below).

The earliest found reposts of the image were made by an anonymous JoyReactor^[1] user on March 30th, 2010, and on 4chan image mirror website Chan4Chan^[2] on November 30th, 2010.

The screen capture, which shows the Marvel superhero lying on the sickbed at the hospital, was originally taken from an episode of the 1967 Spider-Man TV series titled "To Cage a Spider."

Spread

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the catchphrase "That post gave me cancer" was used in a multitude of image macros, usually depicting various characters or people lying sick in bed or otherwise exhibiting signs of being unwell (examples shown below).

Additionally, the catchphrase spawned snowclones "That Post Gave Me X" and "That Y Gave Me Cancer" (examples shown below).

Related Memes

Spider-Man's "I Don't Need a Doctor"

Spider-Man's 'I Don't Need a Doctor' refers to a series of memes based on the image of 60's Spider-Man lying in a hospital bed that humorously imagine how various socioeconomic groups would argue for or against a doctor attending to them. Originating from a viral 2018 post, the format gained a significant presence on iFunny in late February 2020.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References