Scissors vs. Water

Submission 14,194

Part of a series on Object Labeling. [View Related Entries]

About

Scissors vs. Water, also known as Cutting Water With Scissors, refers to an exploitable stock image of a stream of tap water being cut by a pair of scissors. In January 2019, the image was circulated as an object-labeling meme illustrating various futile actions.

Origin

On April 16th, 2018, the YouTube^[1] на минималках channel uploaded a 10 hour video titled "cutting water for 10 hours" ("режу воду 10 часов"). In the video, an unknown person made repeated attempts to cut a stream of water with scissors, with the footage looping in random order. The video gained over 4.9 million views in eight months.

Spread

The viral video sparked a viral trend^[2] among Russian-speaking YouTube users, with participants uploading videos of themselves cutting water with scissors and other objects. Additionally, an object labeling meme based on the video gained popularity on VK social network. The trend was covered by several Russian media outlets, including Memepedia^[3] and Medialeaks^[4].

On January 5th, 2019, Redditor^[5] Coderedcody posted a labeled stock image originating from iStock^[6] to /r/MemeEconomy subreddit. The post gained over 4,200 upvotes in 17 days. In comments, Redditor joeyc2224^[7] posted two templates for the meme.

In January 2019, object labeling memes based on the template gained moderate popularity on several subreddits, including /r/memes^[8] and /r/dankmemes^[9], as well as on VK^[3].