Playing X? I'll Show You Something Interesting

Submission 1,188

Part of a series on Calvin and Hobbes. [View Related Entries]

About

Playing X? I'll Show You Something Interesting is an exploitable meme format based on a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip in which a father shares trivia about record players. The original strip has been mostly recaptioned, with the four-panel format being to divide a certain phenomenon, such as video games, into two humorous categories, like "parkour" and "menus."

Origin

On June 5th, 1990, comic artist Bill Waterson released a four-panel comic of his "Calvin and Hobbes" daily comic strip in which Calvin's father, noticing Calvin listening to a music record,^[1] shares some amusing trivia on angular velocity, leading to Calvin losing sleep that night as he thinks about it (shown below).

Prior to April 2024, several edits of the comics were shared online. For example, on April 17th, 2019, X^[2] user @tiegmusic posted an edit in which Calvin's father talked about music theory, which garnered over 60 reposts and 220 likes in five years.

On April 2nd, 2024, Redditor Super-Contribution-1 posted an edit of the comic that replaced most of the original text with Calvin's father talking about how all jobs can be categorized into two groups: "email" and "farm." The edit (shown below) received over 500 upvotes in the /r/okbuddyrosalyn^[3] in five months.

Spread

On April 25th, 2024, Redditor imGhostKitty posted a similar edit of the comic, categorizing video games into "menus" and "parkour." The edit (shown below) received over 1,800 upvotes in /r/okbuddyrosalyn^[4] in five months.

On April 26th, X^[5] user @tz_toast_rider reposted the image to the platform, where it received over 4,100 reposts and 33,000 likes in five months. On July 29th, 2024, X^[6] user @BitsHammer made another repost that gained over 3,900 reposts and 50,000 likes in one month.

The second repost was followed by more users on X and Tumblr posting similar edits of the comic. For example, on July 31st, 2024, X^[7] user @DownThrowDownB posted an edit categorizing Super Smash Brothers Ultimate characters into "Wolf" and "Luigi," which garnered over 1,400 reposts and 23,000 likes in one month (shown below).

On August 1st, 2024, Tumblr^[8] user eikotheblue posted a version dividing indie video games into "Earthbound" and "Cave Story," which received over 23,000 likes and reblogs in one month and was widely circulated online (shown below).