Jonkers Is Now Working On A Special Liquid

Submission 6,224

About

Jonkers Is Now Working On A Special Liquid refers to a still image from a video describing the work of Hendrik Marius Jonkers, who has invented a type of 'self-healing' concrete that can heal its cracks using bacteria when it comes in contact with water. The phrase was taken out of context and shared as a phrasal meme on Twitter and Tumblr, similar to how They Did Surgery On A Grape spread on social media.

Origin

On April 23rd, 2015, the European Patent Office released a YouTube video about Hendrik Marius Jonkers, an inventor who had created a type of self-healing concrete (shown below). Jonkers explains how he had invented the concrete by utilizing bacteria who secrete limestone when they come in contact with water.

On April 28th, 2017, Mashable posted a wordless video on Jonkers, conveying all of the information about him and his work through text (shown below). A portion of the video features the text "Jonkers is now working on a special liquid…" The second half of the sentence is "…that can fix cracks in conventional buildings."

On August 17th, 2020, Twitter user @videoChess^[2] isolated the "Jonkers is now working on a special liquid" still and posted it without context, 440 retweets and 1,300 likes (shown below).

Spread

Also on August 17th, 2020, Tumblr user plasmological^[1] posted the image to Tumblr, gaining over 26,000 notes. On October 26th, Twitter user @crulge^[3] posted the picture, gaining over 400 retweets and 1,700 likes (shown below). On May 7th, 2021, user @RyanBroderick^[4] reposted it, writing, "this image has been going around Tumblr for days now and it's completely burned itself into my brain. Jonkers is now working with a special liquid," gaining over 60 likes in two hours (shown below, right).