McDonald's Crucifixion

Submission 24,566

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About

McDonald's Crucifixion is a viral image macro of three men wearing clothes around their midsection, mimicking Jesus Christ's crucifixion outside of a McDonald's restaurant in West Virginia. The photo was taken by Jeff Young in 2018 before it became a meme format in the following months and years.

Origin

The original photo of the McDonald's crucifixion was captured by photographer Jeff Young on March 30th, 2018, during a trip through Flatwoods, West Virginia, which was uploaded to his Facebook^[6] account that same day under the title "Happy Easter from West by God Virginia," receiving over 1,300 shares and 300 reactions in roughly four years (shown below). On April 5th, 2018, Tumblr ^[1] user x7s018y3fhigoxg then reposted the image and received more than 29,000 notes in less than three years.

Spread

That month, on April 23rd, Redditor ^[5] Ryden2754 shared the image in the /r/cursedimages subreddit. The post received more than 845 points (99% upvoted) in less than three years.

Over the next few years, people continued to share the image and occasionally adding different text captions. For example, on April 10th, 2018, Imgur ^[2] user zerosandsevens posted the image with the caption, "Father forgive them for they know not what they chew" (shown below, left).

The image went viral again in April 2020, when Redditor^[3] matcha4evea shared the image in the /r/blursedimages subreddit. Within two months, the post received more than 17,000 points (96% upvoted) and 200 comments (shown below, center).

About one month later, on May 10th, Twitter ^[4] user @AmbJohnBoIton shared the image and compared them to coronavirus protesters. They wrote, "these corona protesters are getting nutty with it." Within one month, the post received more than 72,000 likes and 9,500 retweets (shown below, right).