About

The Scariest Things On Earth is an exploitable bar graph showing six phobias including "The Dark," "Clowns," "Sharks," "Serial Killers," "Death" and one more additional fear that's scarier than all of them which meme creators recaption or replace in each iteration. The original meme was shared on Reddit in late 2019 before spreading over the following years.

Origin

On November 3rd, 2019, Redditor Xx_GenericName69_xX posted a meme to /r/dankmemes^[1] that wrote in a top caption above a horizontal bar graph, "The Scariest Things On Earth." Each line represented a different phobia with the last one trumping all of them, reading, "When the bathroom doorknob starts wiggling as you're taking a shit." Over the course of three years, the meme received roughly 58,100 upvotes (shown below).

Spread

On November 5th, 2019, the Instagram ^[2] page enjoystick_official posted an exploited version of the bar graph, replacing the final bar to read, "Windows 10 Update," earning roughly 3,100 likes over the course of three years (shown below, left). On November 29th, 2019, Redditor posted a version to /r/Memes ^[3] that replaced the last bar with, "Valve guy turning his head around." Over the course of three years, it received roughly 46,400 upvotes (shown below, right).

The template continued to be remixed going into the early 2020s with the iterations becoming increasingly over-exploited and the references becoming more obscure. For instance, on September 6th, 2021, the Minecraft Instagram^[4] page illegalminecraft posted a version that earned roughly 21,400 likes in nine months (shown below, left). On June 4th, 2022, Instagram^[5] page the_luckduck posted a version that shows a duck named Doug as the scariest thing, earning roughly 2,100 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References