I'm Joining the War on Drugs on the Side of Drugs

Submission 12,447

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About

I'm Joining the War on Drugs on the Side of Drugs is a phrasal template in which a person leads others to believe that they are standing against something only to subvert expectations and instantly state that they actually support that thing. Spawned by a viral tweet, the format has been used since 2021, often paired with an image macro of Karl Marx drawn as a superhero alongside variations of the catchphrase "I'm Joining the War on X on the Side of Y."

Origin

On July 27th, 2021, Twitter^[1] user @yngjcb tweeted a joke about the War on Drugs, writing, "joining the war on drugs but on the side of the drugs." The tweet (shown below) gained over 27,600 retweets and 206,000 likes in two years.

Prior to that, the joke has been posted online by Twitter^[2]^[3] user @carlos_valencia in 2012 and in 2018, with the tweets failing to get significant traction.

On July 30th, 2021, Redditor SnackToTheThird posted an image macro that paired the joke with an image of Karl Marx drawn as a superhero. The post gained over 5,900 upvotes in the /r/196^[4] subreddit in two years (shown below). The image of the superhero Karl Marx originates from a cover for the Spanish edition of Superheroes and Philosophy by writer Tom Morris.^[5]

Spread

On August 2nd, 2021, Tumblr^[6] user guerrillatech reposted the image, with the image gaining over 12,900 reblogs and 18,600 likes in two years. On October 16th, 2021, voice actor Luke Correia uploaded^[7] a voiced version of the meme that gained over 437,000 views on YouTube in one year (shown below).

The image macro has been used as a recaption format since December 2021. For example, on December 25th, 2021, Twitter^[8] user @spacemacchiato posted a Squid Games!! meme that gained over 220 likes in one year (shown below, left). On January 22nd, 2022, Twitter^[9] user @decafmari_ posted a meme that gained over 40 retweets and 310 likes in the same period (shown below, right).

The format maintained its presence online, both in its image macro and textual versions, through 2022 and early 2023.