The Big Stew

Submission 305

Part of a series on Twitter / X. [View Related Entries]

About

The Big Stew refers to a comedy series of X / Twitter posts relaying the fictional story of a toxic backyard pit, usually depicted as a green-looking liquid, known by the name "the big stew." The posts, written by X user @kloogans, went viral on the platform in October 2024, inspiring memes and references over the following weeks.

Origin

On October 12th, 2024, X^[1] / Twitter user @kloogans made a humorous post about an area in their backyard called "Big Stew" where they supposedly dump old batteries, gas household chemicals and Dr. Pepper soft drinks, stirring it once per month. The post (shown below) received over 7.2 million views 7,000 reposts and 174,000 likes in two weeks.

Spread

On October 13th, 2024, in the same thread, @kloogans posted a photoshopped image of a glowing green pit, with the ripple effect, as if caused by strong radiation, visible over the image. The post (shown below), captioned with an update that @kloogans dumped over 350 smoke detectors into the "big stew" received over 1,000 reposts and 36,000 likes on X^[2] in two weeks.

On October 17th, Redditor Crystal_Carmel posted a screenshot of the thread in the /r/196^[7] subreddit, where it garnered over 590 upvotes in one week.

In the following weeks, @kloogans continued to develop the story of "the big stew" on X. For example, on October 22nd, 2024, @kloogans posted^[3] an updated "photograph" of the pit with a car dumped into it and a bloodstain visible on the wall of the house above it.

On October 23rd, @kloogans^[4] posted a hospital photograph, reporting that "doctors are wearing stupid looking rubber suits," with the post gaining over 830 reposts and 17,000 likes in one day. On October 24th, @kloogans posted a photograph of himself escaping from the hospital, commenting, "I need to stir the big stew. the stew must be stirred." The post (shown below) received over 2,200 reposts and 38,000 likes on X^[5] in one day.

In October 2024, various posts and memes referencing the story were circulated on X. For example, on October 16th, 2024, X^[6] user @m4cden posted a speech bubbling meme featuring the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia character Charlie Kelly that received over 4,600 reposts and 72,000 likes in eight days (shown below).