Kung Pow Penis

Confirmed 179,827

Part of a series on Bernie Sanders. [View Related Entries]

About

Kung Pow Penis is a nonsensical catchphrase paired with images of Bernie Sanders which are inspired by to an audio shitpost on Tumblr. The phrase also has also been used as a way to troll a user on Tumblr who claimed he would block any user who replied to his posts with the phrase.

Origin

The phrase was popularized in an audio reading of a doctored political cartoon showing a Bernie Sanders "consoling" one of his supporters with the phrase "Kung Pow Penis." The post, by Tumblr user snoopingasusualisee, was posted January 6th, 2018 and gained over 25,000 notes (mirror below).

The comic is a doctored political cartoon originally drawn by David Horsey for the Los Angeles Times^[1] and showed Sanders attempting to convince his disappointed supporter to support Hillary Clinton in the 2016 United States Presidential Election (shown below).

Spread

The phrase began further spreading on Tumblr after snoopingasusualisee, the same user who made the "kung pow penis" audio post, responded to a post by user trilllizard666 which stated Tumblr users "treat straight men like incels treat women" with the phrase "kung pow penis" on January 22nd, 2018.^[2] After snoopingasusualisee trolled him further with the phrase, trilllizard666 stated, "i’m going to block everyone that reblogs this version of this post from snoopingasusualisee that i find, fyi".^[3] This led to myriad Tumblr users to reblog the post with the phrase "kung pow penis" (shown below). leading to the post eventually gaining over 38,000 notes.

The trolling practice continued with other posts of trilllizard666's, leading him to include "Stop putting "kung pow penis" on every goddamn thing I reblog" in his Tumblr bio.

Meanwhile, other social media users both on Tumblr and on other sites made photoshop edits using the phrase both in reference to the trilllizard666 situation and about the phrase itself. For example, on July 20th, 2018, a manga-like comic featuring Bernie Sanders saying the phrase was posted to /r/ChapoTrapHouse (shown below, left). Tumblr user dillyt made a Wheeze Comic parody with the phrase (shown below, right).