About

Twice at the Same Time refers to a series of fake historical facts matched with a relevant image. The images are typically captioned with variations of a phrasal template that states an action was invented when the inventor attempted to "X at the same time."

Origin

On April 10th, 2017, Twitter user @AndrewNadeau0 tweeted^[1] "Running was invented in 1612 by Thomas Running when he tried to walk twice at the same time." The post (shown below) received more than 3,400 retweets and 6,400 likes in one year.

Spread

A screenshot of the original Tweet was posted^[6] to the /r/me_irl subreddit on January 31, 2018 by Redditor OfficialZino gaining 3,500 points (98% upvoted) in five months. On March 10th, 2018, Redditor Hedgefundbrokerage posted^[3] a comment to the /r/FakeFacts subbreddit stating, "Running was invented in 1837 when Thomas Running tried to walk twice at the same time." In four months the comment received 75 points (97% upvoted).

On July 8th, 2018, Redditor YTRYFONAS posted^[2] an image of a man lying down with the caption "Lying was invented in 1912 by John Lie who tried to sit twice at the same time" in the /r/dankmemes subreddit (shown below). Within two days, the post received more than 8,800 points (96% upvoted) and 163 comments.

On July 9th, 2018, Redditor Darster_DN posted^[4] another image (shown below, left) to /r/dankmemes of a man looking at his laptop with the caption "Did you know? 'Nice' was invented by Thomas Nice when he tried to get karma twice." The post received more than 7,600 points in a day. The same day, Redditor KennyK11 posted^[5] another image (shown below, right) to /r/dankmemes with the caption "Little know fact: Fortnite was invented when Thomas Fortnite tried to be a virgin twice at the same time." This was followed by Redditors posting variations to /r/dankmemes subreddit.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References