I'd Love to Go Back in Time and Blow People's Minds with My Incredible Knowledge

Submission 2,631

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About

I'd Love to Go Back in Time and Blow People's Minds with My Incredible Knowledge, also known as But How Do You Make This 'Electricity'?, is an exploitable image macro that depicts a time traveler being questioned by people from the past and responding with "I don't know." The question asked by people from the past is typically replaced with a different question about either simple or complex things in different versions of the meme, and the answer given by the time traveler is generally "I don't know." The image is an edit of Carl Bloch's 1890 painting Sermon On The Mount, which depicts Jesus Christ delivering a sermon to his followers.

Origin

The image featuring a bespectacled man being questioned by people from the past is an edited version of Carl Bloch's 1890 painting Sermon On The Mount, which depicts Jesus Christ delivering a sermon to his followers (seen below).^[1]

The earliest known appearance of the image being used as a meme on the internet is on Russian social media platforms starting June 1st, 2018 (seen below, left).^[2]^[3] The man depicted in the meme is potentially Russian YouTuber and content creator AcademeG.^[10]^[11] The earliest known English version of the meme was posted to Imgur^[4] by user rashard359 on February 15th, 2019, and to /r/funny by Redditor /u/El-Sueco^[5] on April 21st, 2019, where it gathered over 30,000 upvotes in four years (seen below, right).

Spread

On June 2019, the Facebook^[6] page Spinozo-Deleuzian Memes without Organs posted a version of the meme that references the philosophical concept of a Body Without Organs, gathering over 500 likes in four years (seen below, left). On September 27th, 2019, Redditor /u/Icebox253 posted a version of the meme to /r/PrequelMemes,^[7] gathering over 1,000 upvotes in four years (seen below, right).

On July 6th, 2020, Twitter^[8] user @owenbroadcast posted the original meme in response to someone saying "The average 18-year-old today knows what a germ is and therefore is more educated than every living doctor a thousand years ago." The post gathered over 5,000 likes in three years (seen below, left). On December 14th, 2020, Redditor /u/sha_clo posted a version of the meme where the time traveler is asked about the internet to /r/dankmemes,^[9] gathering over 6,000 upvotes in three years (seen below right).