About

When Your Card Declines At Therapy or When Ur Card Declines At Therapy is a prominent spinoff of the Imagine Your Card Declines phrasal template and meme format focused on imagining scenarios in which a credit card gets declined at a therapy session so the therapist will have to retraumatize the patient to undo the work done at the session. The scenario led to various punchlines and inspired users to post sad clips from film and television, particularly when the meme resurged in popularity in early 2024.

Origin

Therapy-focused variations of the "Imagine Your Card Declines" meme began shortly after the joke began spreading on Twitter / X in the summer of 2020. The earliest known variation read "imagine yo card declines at therapy so they start a roast session about yo personal problems," but the original poster of the tweet has had their account deleted. However, there are several reposts dated August 31st, 2020 (example^[1] shown below).

Spread

The "therapy" variation of the "Imagine Your Card Declines" meme saw several examples gain decent spread in 2020, but it was not the dominant form of the meme in the 2020s. It continued seeing sparing use over the following several years before rapidly picking up in February 2024.

On February 5th, 2024, Twitter user @ughfinewhatever^[2] tweeted an example that gained over 1,500 retweets and 4,800 likes in four days (shown below, left). On February 7th, Twitter user ultragloss^[3] tweeted an example that gained over 11,000 retweets and 61,000 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Others began using the snowclone to post sad movie and television clips. For example, on February 8th, Twitter user @kagstinycrown posted a scene from Haikyu with the phrasal template, gaining over 1,600 retweets and 6,000 likes in one day (shown below, top). On February 7th, user @biyuuji posted an edit from Jujutsu Kaisen, gaining over 2,900 retweets and 7,000 likes in two days (shown below, bottom).

TikTok Variations

The format also saw TikTok variations, with people recording videos and skits with similar captions. These would often be scored by the song "remember you" by Dominurmom. For example, on February 8th, 2024, user annaappetizer posted a variation that gained over 380,000 likes in six days (shown below, left). The same day, user @spenceuwah posted an example that gained over 755,000 likes in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References