Five Memes That Coincidentally Originated On September 11th But Have Nothing To Do With 9/11

The hemming and hawing about 9/11 as a meme is strong this year, as it seems there's a disproportionate amount of discourse about why the tragic, history-changing day of September 11th, 2001, has been the subject of so many jokes in the 23 years since.

It's a subject Know Your Meme covered in 2017, so instead of rewriting our analysis from seven years ago, we decided to go a different route.

At the Know Your Meme industrial complex, we keep a giant calendar that lists the origin date for every meme ever made. Reviewing the calendar this year, we noticed that the date "September 11th" is coincidentally one of the most fruitful days for meme anniversaries, many of which have nothing to do with the events of September 11th, 2001.

Here is just a sample of the memes that got their start on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Crying Jordan

Crying Michael Jordan is inarguably one of internet history's most recognizable memes, as in the mid-2010s, the image of Michael Jordan crying at his Hall of Fame acceptance speech seemed to be plastered on every gag picture posted to social media.

What you may not know is that Jordan's now-immortalized Hall of Fame speech took place on September 11th, 2009.

It wasn't until several years later that Crying Jordan took off as a meme, and the significant date of Jordan's Hall of Fame speech has been a coincidental bit of trivia lost to time.

However, it is a – to coin a phrase – "9/11 baby," and is arguably the biggest meme to originate on September 11th in internet history.

Ted Cruz Likes A Saucy Tweet

For a meme that has nothing to do with the September 11th, 2001, attacks but is definitely enhanced by occurring on an anniversary of the tragic event, we turn to politician Ted Cruz.

On September 11th, 2017, instead of spending the day in respectful mourning for the victims of 9/11/2001, Senator Ted Cruz was (seemingly) scrolling through Twitter, saw a clip posted by the account @SexuallPosts of a film made by adult content company Reality Kings, and gave it a like.

If the incident was not the first time a politician got caught using Twitter in a salacious way, it was definitely the most influential. The moment led to a field day on Twitter, as the site appeared to love that the Senator and former Presidential candidate apparently was lusting on the app on September 11th.

Cruz, of course, denied his involvement in the incident, claiming "a number of people" had access to his account and one of those people "inadvertently" hit like, but people largely seemed unwilling to believe him — because the alternative was much funnier.

Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson

Also on September 11th, 2017, while Ted Cruz was allegedly being horny on main, Tumblr user umbronydraws was drawing what would become one of the internet's most infamous works of fan art, dubbed "Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson."

The piece was part of their AU series of fan art that depicted historical figures as queer college students. Their version of Thomas Jefferson depicts the third United States President as a trans male obsessed with anime, a former drug dealer, a furry, a former cocaine addict and a good Pokémon player.

Topping all this off, Jefferson is wearing a binder, which trans and non-binary people use to suppress their breasts, featuring the face of Hatsune Miku.

This on its own is a lot to process, and the backlash it inspired led to the piece's ultimate deletion just two weeks after it was posted. However, in 2020, umbronydraws drew controversy for criticizing the ACAB movement, which led to another round of parodies and jokes about the piece.

In 2021, the meme reached its zenith when a prankster vandalized the Wikipedia page of Aaron Burr with a reference to the meme, leading to an immortal screenshot of Twitter's trending topics.

Why He Ourple?

Why He Ourple? holds an esteemed seat in the great pantheon of TikTok comments that become memes, and it just happened to have first been posted on September 11th.

On September 11th, 2021, TikToker @user6785558212 posted an Ancient Egypt cat video featuring a cat that has inexplicably purple spots.

User @.aatidya.r then posted a comment on the video reading, "And why he ourple?" along with the Crying Laughing Emoji. This was spotted by Twitter user @wlfdog04, who tweeted screenshots of the video and comment that day.

Since then, "Why He Ourple?" has been a staple of nonsensical social media discourse, and it all got its start on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11.

Pikachu Boner

The image of Pikachu with an erection (that somehow appears to be coming out of its foot, judging by the location) was a staple of le epic Reddit memers in the mid-2010s and still gets play today. It too shares a birthday with the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

The "Pikachu Boner" template is an edit of the Pokémon episode "Challenge of the Samurai Boy." As one can likely guess, Pikachu does not have an erection in the actual episode.

The "boner" edits came later and were particularly popular among sports fans and "edgy humor" types. The episode, however, aired on September 11th, 1998, forever connecting an image of Pikachu with morningwood with the events of 9/11.