Guy Throwing Rocks at an Elephant

Submission 3,262

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

About

Guy Throwing Rocks at an Elephant refers to a two-panel cartoon in which a person is throwing rocks at an elephant, who ignores him. Originally posted on Tumblr in August 2023, the image saw spread online, inspiring edits, including the viral version in which the dialogue is altered to the visitor calling the elephant gay.

Origin

On August 8th, 2023, webcomic artist Crawfish Comic posted a two-panel cartoon in which a visitor at a zoo is throwing rocks at an elephant to get a reaction to Tumblr.^[1] The elephant ignores him, replying that there is no answer greater than silence and no punishment greater than forgiveness, adding, "bitch." The post (shown below) gained over 51,100 likes and reblogs in eight months.

Spread

On August 20th and August 29th, 2023, X^[2]^[3] / Twitter users @ThanksThoth and @Amanseeks both posted the image with the word "bitch" removed (shown below). The posts received over 260 reposts and 2,300 likes, and 1,900 reposts and 15,000 likes, respectively, in eight months.

The latter post was followed by the initial edits^[4] of the image; most notably, on August 30th, X^[5] user @Ankroma1 posted an edit of the first panel in which the man called the animal gay, which received over 10 reposts and 570 likes in eight months (shown below, left).

On November 7th, 2023, X^[6] user @GoombaShroomba used the edit as a reaction image, gaining over 470 reposts and 4,100 likes in five months. On November 7th, artist Fallenchungus quoted^[7] the post, writing, "I would trade all my genuine art talent just for the ability to draw like this only." The post (shown below) received over 3,000 reposts and 33,000 likes on X, helping popularize the meme.

On February 27th, 2024, X^[8] user @neorouxls made a thread of images of Undertale characters throwing rocks at character Flowey and calling him gay. The thread received multiple submissions, with the opening post (shown below, left) gaining over 3,500 reposts and 36,000 likes in two months.