Spiders Georg

About

Spiders Georg is a fictional character that was created on Tumblr as a joke about a false statistic regarding the average number of spiders a person may consume each year. Originating in 2013, the character spread via memes over the following years as it began appearing on other platforms like Reddit and Facebook.

Origin

According to Snopes,^[8] a myth claiming that "the average person swallows eight spiders per year" originated from a 1954 collection of common misconceptions regarding insect folklore. In 1993, the claim was reprinted in an article written by columnist Lisa Holst in PC Professional, which contained a list of false statements mocking misinformation that had been circulating in a viral e-mail. The false factoid subsequently circulated widely across the Internet as truth. On January 9th, 2013, Tumblr user Max Lavergne^[1] submitted a blog post about the often-quoted factoid, asserting that people eating "three spiders a year" is actually a statistical error due to a man named "Spiders Georg" who consumes "over 10,000" of the arachnids each day.

“average person eats 3 spiders a year" factoid actualy (sic) just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted”

Spread

On March 13th, 2013, the Spiders-Georg Tumblr^[5] blog was launched, featuring posts written from the perspective of the fictional spider-eating character. On May 16th, Tumblr^[3] user Jdniemand submitted a blog post arguing that Spiders Georg would actually have to eat "over fifty-seven million spiders per day" to cause the statistical error averaging to three spiders per person on the entire Earth. On June 15th, a Facebook^[4] page titled "Spiders Georg" was created, which highlighted a poster featuring actor Nicolas Cage as Spiders Georg paired with a camel spider (shown below).

On August 20th, Redditor brostrider quoted Lavergne's Tumblr post in the comment section of a submission to the /r/todayilearned^[7] subreddit. The following day, Lavergne^[6] highlighted a screenshot of the comment, which gathered upwards of 38,800 notes in the next year (shown below). On November 17th, The Daily Dot^[2] published an article about the fictional character's Internet popularity.

Search Interest

External References