About

The Earth is a Cup / Explain is a three-part dialogue meme popular on Tumblr. In the meme, a person makes a short, bold claim, another responds "explain," and the original gives a short, humorous explanation.

Format

Person 1: (X) is… (Y)
Person 2: Explain
Person 1: Short explanation

Origin

On July 19th, 2015, Tumblr user cupsnake100 published a text post that read, "The Earth is… a Cup."^[1] The same day, user richhoneytrader100 reblogged the post, adding "Explain," and cupsnake100 reblogged their post with the explanation "Holds Things."^[2] The post, shown below, has gained over 298,000 notes as of January 27th, 2017.

Spread

The popularity of the post inspired variations and artwork in the coming years, particularly towards the end of 2016. On August 20th, 24karatdead^[3] published a variation that read "My girlfriend is a cup," with the explanation, "holds me," and gained over 41,000 notes. More examples appeared on Tumblr around November 2016, often with variations relating to the poster's "girlfriend." Memearchives^[4] has reblogged several variations each with tens of thousands of notes. Around this time, artistic renderings of the text posts began appearing on Tumblr. For example, incorrect-trekquotes^[5] published a variation using Spock and Captain Kirk talking about the enterprise, and user systemofthesoul^[6] drew a 3-panel comic illustrating the text (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References