Hearing The Key In The Door Every Evening Was My Own “Afghanistan”

About

Hearing The Key In The Door Every Evening Was My Own “Afghanistan” is a prevalent Twitter copypasta inspired by a woman who declared, during the 2021 Taliban Offensive In Afghanistan, that she did not care about Afghanistan because she "grew up with an alcoholic, psychologically abusive father in a constant state of anxiety about the future." She then said, "Hearing the key in the door every evening was my own "Afghanistan" for almost 20 years." The quote is also used as a phrasal template meme in which people use Hearing The Key In The Door Every Evening Was My Own X and replace "Afghanistan" in the original text.

Origin

On August 15th, 2021, amidst the Taliban offensive in Afghanistan, Twitter user @Porkchop_EXP^[1] declared she did not care about the event, writing, "Sorry, not sorry, not going to care about Afghanistan because I grew up with an alcoholic, psychologically abusive father in constant state of distress, anxiety and worry about the future. Hearing the key in the door every evening was my own 'Afghanistan' for almost 20 years" (shown below). The tweet was quickly deleted and its initial spread is unknown, however, numerous screenshots of it are still easily found online.

Spread

The tweet quickly became a copypasta in the following days, though people replaced "Afghanistan" with other inconveniences and news stories. For example, on August 19th, 2021, Twitter user @catsfeettowel^[2] posted the copypasta in response to the story of Geronimo the alpaca being put to death, gaining over 30 retweets and 670 likes in one year (shown below, left). On September 13th, Twitter user @ramzreboot^[3] posted it in response to Nicki Minaj's Cousin's Friend's Balls, gaining over 50 likes in one year (shown below, right).

The copypasta continued seeing use through 2022. In particular, the copypasta was in multiple high-engagement tweets by user @MOMMYBIGDICK. For example, on July 8th, 2022, she used the copypasta to joke about the assassination of Shinzo Abe, gaining over 670 retweets and 15,000 likes in four months (shown below, left).^[4] On November 17th, she then joked about the rumored Twitter shutdown with the copypasta, gaining over 2,000 retweets and 40,000 likes in five days^[5] (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References