Lie Down / Try Not To Cry / Cry A Lot

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Part of a series on Safety Instruction Parodies. [View Related Entries]

About

Lie Down / Try Not to Cry / Cry a Lot refers an exploitable comic based around an image featured in a College Humor article titled Realistic Gym Workout Diagrams, which featured parody workout posters. The image has been edited in a number of ways to include various characters and express humorously exaggerated sadness at various events, such as a television series ending. The original has also been included as a reaction image in popular posts with a sad or heartwarming image above it.

Origin

On September 10th, 2010, the Internet humor site College Humor^[1] published a post titled "Realistic Gym Workout Diagrams," which featured parody workout posters for exercising specific muscle groups. In the article one parody poster in particular shows a man holding curling up in a fetal position with the phrase "Lie Down; Try Not to Cry; Cry a Lot" posted above (shown below). The image was later credited to CollegeHumor's Caldwell Tanner.^[5]

Spread

In late 2012, edits of the image began circulating online. On March 5th, 2013, the male centered entertainment site Mandatory^[2] published an article titled "LIE DOWN. TRY NOT TO CRY. CRY A LOT. AN EMOTIONAL MEME COLLECTION" which collected several of the image edits into a single post. Many of the edits include pop culture references, generally by editing the character in the comic to be a different character from a pop culture series. Other edits include the original post as a reaction image to a heartwarming or sad story (example shown below).

There are over 9,400 "Lie Down Try Not To Cry Cry A Lot" memes on Memecenter^[3] as of August 17th, 2017, though it should be noted that not every meme under the tag includes the comic. The image remains popular on Tumblr as well.^[4]