Lunging for the Officer's Gun

Part of a series on Letting Intrusive Thoughts Win. [View Related Entries]

Updated Jul 05, 2023 at 08:25PM EDT by Philipp.

Added Mar 20, 2023 at 04:29PM EDT by Philipp.

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About

Lunging for the Officer's Gun refers to a series of memes about the intrusive thought of making a lunge for a police officer's service weapon, an incident that can possibly end up with the officer retaliating and killing the person instead. Spawned by a viral Snail in My Ear meme in late 2022, the meme achieved significant virality in March 2023.

Origin

On September 30th, 2022, Redditor f-as-in-frank posted a Snail in My Ear meme captioned, "Snail in my ear telling me to reach for the police officer's pistol" to the /r/shitposting^[1] subreddit, where it gained over 790 upvotes in six months (seen below).

(listening to the snail) Snail in my ear- telling me to reach for the police officer's pistol

Spread

In the following weeks, the image was widely circulated online through reposts.^[2] For example, on October 4th, 2022, Twitter^[2] user @PeetingDisorder tweeted a joke about lunging for an officer's gun, which gained over 2,100 retweets and 26,700 likes in five months (shown below, left). On October 6th, iFunny^[3] user TheRedBaron posted a screenshot of the tweet, gaining over 12,200 smiles in the same period.

On December 19th, 2022, Twitter^[4] user @sulkingtime tweeted a meme that garnered over 1,400 retweets and 13,800 likes in three months and was widely shared in the following weeks (shown below, right).

peet @Peeting Disorder The ABCs backwards? No problem officer Z... uhhh X... *lunges for his gun* 8:57 PM . Oct 4, 2022

huffy @sulkingtime using my grabby shark to lunge for an officer's service weapon 12:40 PM Dec 19, 2022 343.7K Views

On February 12th, 2023, Twitter^[5] user @rundizzy wrote, "has anyone else noticed the glowing aura around cops guns lately," with user @MrToDamnFunny replying^[6] with an image of a police officer's weapon emanating a glowing aura (shown below, left). The tweets gained over 70 retweets and 890 likes and 220 retweets and 3,300 likes in one month, respectively.

On March 1st, iFunny^[7] user Nimitz19 posted a Jamiroquai Grab meme paired with the joke, with the post being featured and accruing over 17,300 smiles in three weeks (shown below, right).