About

A Large Boulder the Size of a Small Boulder refers to a phrasal gaffe posted by Colorado's San Miguel Sheriff Twitter account in January 2020 when announcing a roadblock warning. The phrase describing a boulder that was blocking a road was widely mocked and parodied on Twitter.

Origin

On January 27th, 2020, Twitter user @SheriffAlert^[1] tweeted a picture of a snowy road with a large boulder in the middle of it with the caption, "Large boulder the size of a small boulder is completely blocking east-bound lane Highway 145 mm78 at Silverpick Rd. Please use caution and watch for emergency vehicles in the area" (shown below). The tweet gained over 162,800 likes and 31,400 retweets in a day.

Spread

On January 27th, 2020, Twiter user @austin_mcbrown^[2] shared a "stocks": image labeled "science" with the caption, "Man that there boulder is so large it looks kinda small!" (shown below, left). The tweet gained over 6,900 likes and 280 retweets in a day. That same day, Twitter user @GPollowitz^[3] reposted the original tweet with the caption, "this small boulder identifies as a large boulder" (shown below, right) and accumulated over 1,800 likes and 250 retweets in a day.

The next day, Twitter user @devon__palmer^[4] tweeted "Everybody gangster until the large boulder the size of a small boulder shows up" (shown below). The tweet gained over 4,700 likes and 880 retweets in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References