About

This Medicine May Cause Death is a series of jokes about the juxtaposition of happy people in advertisements for pharmaceutical products and the narrator reading side effects for the product.

Origin

While jokes about advertisements pharmaceutical existed offline prior to its posting, on January 25th, 2016, Tumblr ^[1] user ewaneneollav posted a picture of a dog with the caption "medicine commercial: you'll shit to death." The post received more than 326,000 notes in less than four years (shown below).

Spread

On July 27th, 2019, Twitter user @moereez tweeted, "voiceover: side effects may include instant heart failure, spontaneous combustion, super diabetes- people in the commercial." The tweet included a video of an animated character dancing (shown below).

voiceover: side effects may include instant heart failure, spontaneous combustion, super diabetes-people in the commercial: pic.twitter.com/YOXTCCS4EQ

— 𝖒△⃒⃘𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖊𝖟 ⚯͛ (@moereez) July 27, 2019

On September 11th, Redditor ^[2] theyellingbear posted a Joker and Peter Parker Dancing meme with the caption "This medicine may cause death. People in the ad." The post received more than 200 points (99% upvoted) in less than six months (shown below).

The following month, on November 13th, iFunny ^[2] user NerdsCollide posted a variation of the meme. The post received more than 89,000 upvotes in less than one month (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not Available.

External References