It’s Up To You To Break Generational Trauma

Confirmed 90,782

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

About

It’s Up To You To Break Generational Trauma, also known as It's Up To You To Traumatize Your Child, is an inspirational catchphrase and cartoon showing generations of fathers yelling at their sons with the final father instead offering an affirmation rather than a criticism. The original motivational cartoon was shared on Reddit in late 2021 and soon morphed into other cartoon templates in early 2022 on Facebook and Instagram. The cartoons were recaptioned through multiple ironic iterations, thus becoming an exploitable template.

Origin

The idea of breaking generational trauma surfaced in online content en masse starting in early 2021. For instance, on June 8th, 2021, the Instagram^[1] account anewme_a.w posted an infographic about the topic, earning roughly 7,600 likes in one year, as well as multiple reposts.^[2] On June 19th, 2021, the Instagram^[3] account plasmaborn369 posted a meme about breaking generational trauma that used the My Parents At Age 29 template, earning roughly 4,900 likes in one year.

On October 1st, 2021, Instagram^[16] user aldotonelli uploaded a carousel post with two images consisting of the original cartoon used for the later template. Over the course of eight months, the post received roughly 20,800 likes (shown below). This original comic is written in Spanish and is actually about positive affirmations making their way through a family's lineage.

On October 13th, 2021, the Facebook^[17] page Lenguaje y Literatura changed the words of each father to show the image breaking a cycle of negativity, earning roughly 2,500 reactions in eight months (shown below, left). On October 27th, 2021, Redditor XXLame posted a cartoon to /r/wholesomememes^[4] that translated the aforementioned post into English, receiving roughly 119,000 upvotes in seven months (shown below, right).

Spread

On November 5th, 2021, the aforementioned cartoon was posted by Facebook^[5] page Fathers Matter with the top cation, "It's up to you to break generational trauma," earning roughly 7,600 reactions in seven months (shown below, left). The image was also reposted on Instagram^[6] in early November 2021. On November 13th, 2021, Instagram^[7] page stalememesfornormiehasbeens recaptioned the text to reference Big Chungus, earning over 50 likes and being the first page to re-edit the template (shown below, right).

Many more iterations of the cartoon were shared on Instagram^[8] going into the end of 2021, and by 2022, different cartoons displaying essentially the same lineage of fathers emerged online. For instance, on March 14th, 2022, Instagram^[9] user and life coach evancarmichael posted a new version, adding a cartoon version of himself into the template and earning roughly 1,300 likes in three months (shown below, left). On March 21st, 2022, Instagram^[10] user and life coach john_lee_official posted his own version, also inserting himself into the cartoon and earning roughly 38,400 likes in three months (shown below, right).

On March 24th, 2022, the Instagram^[11] page mindset_codes reposted john_lee_official's cartoon with their own watermark, earning roughly 12,600 likes in three months. On March 28th, 2022, Instagram^[12] page themillionairecodes did the same thing, earning roughly 2,300 likes in two months (shown below, left). On April 3rd, 2022, the Instagram^[13] page motivationsspace posted the aforementioned cartoon but photoshopped the watermarks out, earning roughly 1.7 million likes in two months (shown below, right).

Instagram page motivationsspace's version of john_lee_official's cartoon became the more notable exploitable template going into June 2022. For instance, on May 19th, 2022, Instagram^[14] page femcelincelalliance posted an iteration that replaced the bottom text with, "It's Up To You To Traumatize Your Child," earning over 540 likes in two weeks (shown below, left). On May 20th, 2022, Instagram^[15] user pairofkingspod recaptioned the meme to reference the clothing brand Chrome Hearts, earning roughly 27,500 likes in two weeks (shown below, right).