And Yet a Trace of the True Self Exists in the False Self / Circle of Life

Submission 38,008

About

And Yet a Trace of the True Self Exists in the False Self / Circle of Life refers to a photoshop image series in which a number of sequential images depict the evolution of a given subject in a comical way. The meme is often accompanied by text reading "and yet a trace of the true self exists in the false self" highlighting the cyclical nature of the given evolution.

Origin

On July 28th, 2018, gary56 posted an image depicting dinosaurs turning into oil, oil turning into plastic, and plastic turning into toy dinosaurs to Russian forum yaplakal^[1] (shown below). This is the earliest known instance of the meme. The image was reposted to /r/funny^[2] on July 31st, 2019 under the title "circle of life" garnering over 76,000 upvotes in over a year.

Spread

On August 7th, 2019, Redditor killer523 posted a photoshopped version of the image to /r/memes,^[3] replacing the images to depict the evolution of dinosaurs to oil to PCs to the video game "ARK: Survival Evolved," garnering over 47,000 upvotes in one year (shown below, left). On April 15th, 2020, aleksfo96 uploaded a version of the original "circle of life" image to /r/geology^[4] with the additional text "And yet a trace of the true self" on the top and "Exists in the False Self" on the bottom, garnering over 340 upvotes in 7 months (shown below, right). This is the earliest known use of the text and image together. The image was re-uploaded to imgur^[5] on April 18th, garnering over 7,600 views in a comparable span of time.

The text persisted in many subsequent versions of the meme. In August of 2020, a version of the meme was posted to a Consulting Memes board on fishbowl^[6] showing how cochineal beetles are used in the manufacturing of red dye^[7] (shown below, left). On August 27th, Pharaoh Atem posted a version of the meme to their Facebook page^[8] garnering over 180 reactions and 60 shares in 4 months (shown below, right).