One Trillion Tickets

Submission 23,556

Part of a series on Cultural Reset. [View Related Entries]

About

One Trillion Tickets and One Trillion Copies are memes that ironically claim a certain media, often one expected to flop, will be the first to sell one trillion copies or tickets and cause a cultural reset. The meme draws some of its humor from the fact that the entire population as of 2022 equals only 7.9 billion people, which would mean that every person on Earth would have to buy multiple copies or tickets in order for such a staggering result to be achieved. The joke is similar to the Cultural Reset meme.

Origin

On January 10th, 2022, Instagram^[1] account zerosuitsans posted a Venomposting Whisper image macro in which a fanmade Venomverse poster was captioned, "This gon be the first movie ever to sell 1 trillion tickets" (authorship unconfirmed). The post gained over 730 likes in three months.

Spread

In the following week, the image was widely shared on Instagram and Twitter. For example, on January 10th, 2022, Instagram^[2] meme page yourlordandsaviourmonke reposted the image, with the post gaining over 6,900 likes in three months. On January 16th, Instagram^[3] meme page salad.snake reposted it, with the post accumulating over 64,400 likes. On the same day, Twitter^[4] user @BGarcN2 shared the image, gaining over 140 retweets and 1,100 likes.

On February 14th, 2022, Twitter^[5] user @dagger_actual shared a screenshot from their friend's Discord server in which Discord user BIGVENOMFAN12 shared the image, also writing, "1 TRILLION TICKETS. A CULTURAL RESET." The post received over 5,300 retweets and 52,800 likes on Twitter prior to being deleted (tweet and screenshot shown below, left and center).

In the following days, the image was widely circulated online and referenced. For example, on February 16th, the gimmick Twitter^[6] account Images Preceding Legendary Events (@TheGimmickAcc) made a post referencing the image which gained 50 retweets and 2,900 likes (shown below, left). On February 22nd, Facebook^[7] page I love sweaty anime girls reposted the screenshot. On February 17th, Redditor^[8] CorvusGriseo posted the earliest found derivative meme based on the image, a meme about Elden Ring, which received 300 upvotes in /r/Eldenring in two months (shown below, right).

The format received further spread starting in mid-March 2022, being used to joke about films, video games and other media expected to be bad or mediocre and flop. For example, on March 12th, 2022, Twitter^[9] user @KZXcellent jokingly wrote, "One trillion copies sold, a cultural reset" about the then-upcoming video game Stranger of Paradise (tweet shown below, left). The tweet garnered over 610 retweets and 2,500 likes in one month. On March 14th, 2022, Twitter^[10] user @RedMakuzava tweeted "FIRST GAME TO SELL ONE TRILLION COPIES YES" about the game, with the tweet gaining over 250 likes (shown below, right).

In late March 2022, the joke achieved strong association with the Morbius Sweep, a series of memes ironically celebrating the 2022 superhero film Morbius, also set in the Sony's Spider-Man Universe, as a massive commercial and critical success despite the film being largely panned (examples shown below).

Cultural Reset

Cultural Reset is a phrase common on Twitter referring to a moment in music film and pop-culture that changed the genre or all of society in some way. The phrase is used both ironically and sincerely mostly by stan accounts tweeting about their favorite artists.

Morbius Sweep

Morbius Sweep or #MorbiusSweep refers to a series of parody memes ironically celebrating the 2022 superhero film Morbius as a massive commercial and critical success despite the movie being largely panned. Originating from the /r/moviecirclejerk subreddit, the trend gained a massive presence on Twitter in early April 2022 following the negative critic and audience reviews of the film.