Superman Refuses To Help

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About

Superman Refuses To Help refers to a series of four-panel exploitable memes featuring comic book superhero Superman seeing a building on fire, but because of the name on the burning building, he decides to change into the clothes of his alter-ego Clark Kent and not save the people in the building.

Origin

On March 20th, 2013, Belgian cartoonist Jeroom Snelders posted a four-panel comic of Superman seeing a burning building that has the words "Community Center for Elderly Lesbians" on it. In the comic (shown below), Instead of helping the people inside, Superman goes to a phone booth and changes into the clothes of Clark Kent, Superman's secret identity. The final panel shows Clark Kent walking down the streets, whistling to himself. When posted to Facebook, the comic received more than 1,000 reactions and 213 shares.^[5]^[6]

Spread

Later that year, Memecenter user lungu posted one of the earliest variations of the Superman Refuses To Help on June 1st. In this version (shown below), Superman sees that Justin Bieber is recording inside the burning building. ^[1]

The following day, Twitter user @AlcaideFlanagan posted a variation of this meme, replacing the picture of Justin Bieber with the words "Justin Bieber Annual Fan Meet." The tweet (shown below) received more than 25 retweets and 10 likes.^[2]

The Justin Bieber variation of the meme became very popular and has since been translated into Spanish and Portuguese, among other languages (shown below, left).^[3]

On August 12th, 2013, Funny Junk user imonaboatman upload a variation of the meme, featuring the words "Westboro Baptist Church HQ" instead of the "Justin Bieber Fan Meet." The image (shown below, right) received more than 570 positive votes.^[4]