Skull Cow Isn't Real, It Can't Hurt You

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About

Skull Cow Isn't Real, It Can't Hurt You refers to a viral joke turned snowclone in which a therapist attempts to convince their patient to stop fixating on a menacing-looking cow. Written by Twitter user @Probgoblin in April 2018, in February 2019 the joke has become a snowclone format used for photographs of bizarre-looking cows and otherwise cursed images.

Origin

On August 13th, 2014, Redditor^[1] JollyElnglishman posted an image of a cow with a skull-shaped pattern on its head to /r/mildlyinteresting subreddit. The post gained over 2,700 upvotes in six months, with Imgur^[2] post gaining over 4,200 points.

On April 18th, 2018, Twitter^[3] user @Probgoblin tweeted a joke about a therapist attempting to convince their client that "Skull Cow" isn't real and that it can't hurt them. The tweet gained over 24,300 retweets and 95,000 likes in ten months.

Spread

In the following months, the screenshot of the tweet was posted multiple times on Reddit^[4]^[5] and other online platforms.^[6]

Resurgence

Starting February 18th, 2019, various jokes based on the format were posted by Reddit users. On February 18th, Redditor^[7] Egg_Boye uploaded the first known derivative meme featuring "long cow" (shown below, left). The post gained over 4,000 upvotes in ten days. On February 19th, Redditor^[8] Craig__Christ posted a meme featuring "chad cow" which received over 13,400 upvotes.

In the following days, more variations of the meme, mostly featuring various unnaturally-looking cows and disproportionate objects, were posted on Reddit.