Crayon Eater / Marines Eat Crayons

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Part of a series on Catchphrases. [View Related Entries]

About

Marines Eat Crayons is a catchphrase used in jokes to mock the intelligence of United States Marine Corps members, who are sometimes called "Crayon Eaters" by other branches of the military. Jokes about U.S. Marines being "dumb" or "autistic," and eating crayons as a result, have existed on the internet since at least the mid-2010s, with memes about the joke being widely circulated since 2019. However, the meme likely stems from intra-military jokes predating their prevalence on the internet. The cliché also inspired memes about Titans from the video game Destiny eating crayons, however, the original creator of the "Titans eat crayons" meme has since disavowed the joke because they felt it encouraged ableism.

Origin

The idea of eating crayons, much like eating glue, is typically associated with stupidity, being weird or being on the autism spectrum. The habit of eating crayons is also attributed to infants and toddlers, with discussions about the topic taking place online since at least the 2000s.^[12]

The earliest known meme about U.S. Marines specifically eating crayons was posted to Imgur on August 24th, 2016, by a user named HarlemStruggle. The post gathered over 2,000 upvotes in seven years (seen below).^[1] Some sources credit the image to the Facebook page "Untied Status Marin Crops," which often posted Spoderman memes from 2017 to 2018.^[3]^[4]

A Quora post from January 2nd, 2017, notably asked the question, "Why are there so many jokes about Marines eating crayons?" and received a variety of responses, including one from a purported former infantry rifleman in the Marine Corps that read, "i dunt no / krainz r yumie / i liek creola," receiving over 300 upvotes in five years (seen below).

Another answer delved deeper into Marine-Crayon lore, outlining other jokes disparaging the intelligence of Marines that are common in the U.S. military, and received 200 upvotes in five years as well (seen below).^[2]

Spread

A page often credited with helping to popularize the joke about Marines eating crayons is the Facebook page Untied Status Marin Crops, which often uses Dolan and Spoderman memes in its posts. Some early examples from the page about Marines and crayons were posted on May 12th, 2017,^[5] and October 3rd, 2017,^[6] gathering over 700 (seen below, left) and 1,500 likes, respectively, in roughly five years (seen below, right).

Jokes and memes referencing this continued to spread into the early 2020s to other social media platforms. For example, on January 28th, 2021, TikToker^[10] @sweetsupportusa posted a video joking about Marines eating crayons, gathering over 890,000 plays and 170,000 likes in nearly a year (seen below, left). On October 2nd, 2021, TikToker^[11] @bigwill1997 posted a video explaining the lore behind the Marines eating crayons joke, gathering over 50,000 plays and 3,000 likes in three months (seen below, right).

Titans Eat Crayons (Destiny)

Sometime in 2019, jokes about the character class Titans from the video game Destiny 2 eating crayons began spreading on the internet. Twitter^[7] user @RickKackis posted a meme about the topic on December 24th, 2019, gathering over 3,000 likes in three days (seen below, left). On January 16th, 2020, Twitter^[8] user @XiiGuardian posted a meme about Titans and crayons, gathering over 3,000 likes (seen below, right).

On June 22nd, 2020, Twitter^[9] user @Isa_Kole posted a tweet taking credit for popularizing the "Titans eating crayons" meme, adding that they were inspired by "Marines eating crayons" jokes their Navy father and Marine cousin would make. However, they notably disavowed the joke due to its perceived connotations with ableism and autism-bashing (seen below). The tweet gathered over 2,000 likes in two years.