Don't Bother, You Are Years Behind My Research

Submission 1,504

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

About

Don't Bother, You Are Years Behind My Research is a catchphrase and copypasta used to tell someone not to bother doing something because they're already doing the same thing but better. The phrase was popularized on X / Twitter in October 2024 after user @JohnCogs5 posted it under another user's post, who shared a photo of himself making "home made multipurpose liquid." A screenshot of the interaction garnered viral spread online, inspiring further memes using the phrase.

Origin

On October 15th, 2024, X^[1] user @Horned_Sphere posted a photo of a bowl of green liquid being stirred with a wooden spoon, writing, "Home made multipurpose liquid," garnering over 14,000 likes in three days. On October 16th, X^[2] user @JohnCogs5 commented, "Don't bother. You are years behind my research," garnering over 7,500 likes in two days.

The comment is likely a reference to a prior X^[3] post made on April 26th, 2020 by @JohnCogs5 where he claims to be working on something called "cogs fluid," which garnered over 20,000 likes in four years.

Spread

On October 17th, 2024, X^[4] user @mountainlex posted a screenshot of the interaction, writing, "Up late tracking a major beef on Fluids Twitter," garnering over 13,000 likes in a day. On the same day, a screenshot of the interaction was posted to /r/196,^[5] garnering over 5,400 upvotes in a day.

Later that day, Tumblr^[6] user ey3ball posted an edit of the screenshot based on the movie Reanimator, garnering around 150 notes in a day.

On the same day, X^[7] user @BostonMassUSA posted an image of the slide from the viral Boston cop falling down slide video captioned, "Don’t bother. You are years behind my research," in response to a post reading, "pig slide," garnering over 66,000 likes in a day.

Later that night, X^[8] user @slandrroid posted, "[To my 2-year-old daughter trying to recite her ABCs] Don’t bother. You are years behind my research," garnering over 3,600 likes in a day. The original interaction was also posted to /r/PeterExplainsTheJoke,^[9] garnering over 500 upvotes in the same span of time.