About

Don't Have a Bookmark? refers to a series of mock life hacks encouraging people to use items that could ruin a book instead of a bookmark. These generally follow the phrasal template "Don't have a bookmark? Try [X] instead."

Origin

On October 27th, 2016, the Instagram ^[1] account @shitheadsteve shared an image of ketchup smeared on the page of a book under the caption, "Don't have a bookmark? Try using ketchup instead." Within three years, the post received more than 48,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

On September 9th, 2019, the official account for the snack food Chex Mix tweeted, ^[2] "Don't have a bookmark? Try using Chex Mix instead." Within four days, the tweet received more than 11,000 likes and 4,700 retweets (shown below, left).

Following the post, other brands began posting similar images. For example, on September 10th, VitaminWater's Twitter account shared,^[3] "don't have a bookmark? try using vitaminwater instead." The tweet received more than 11,000 likes and 3,400 retweets in less than three days (shown below, center).

Others began using the format, too. On September 11th, Twitter^[4] user @lauraeweymouth shared a variation with a dog between the pages of a book (shown below, right).

Several media outlets covered the memes, including Mashable ^[5] and Time.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References