The Fastest Things On Earth

Submission 4,336

Part of a series on Safely Endangered. [View Related Entries]

About

The Fastest Things On Earth is a parody infographic from the webcomic series Safely Endangered listing the four fastest things alive: a cheetah, an airplane, the speed of light and someone running downstairs on Christmas morning. The comic was posted in December 2020 and became the subject of photoshops later that month. It's since been used as an exploitable meme format by replacing the fourth image.

Origin

On December 6th, 2020, webcomic artist Chris McCoy posted a comic to the Safely Endangered Webtoons^[1] site titled "The Fastest Things On Earth," showing four of the fastest things on earth: a cheetah, an airplane, the speed of light and finally, "running downstairs on Christmas morning." He posted the comic to Instagram^[2] and Facebook^[3] on December 21st, gaining over 78,000 likes on the former and 4,100 reactions on the latter in two years (shown below).

On December 19th, two days before the Instagram and Facebook posts, Redditor Poetawesomendo posted an edited version of the graph to /r/memes^[4] referencing the I Do Not Control the Speed at Which Lobsters Die meme, gaining over 70 upvotes in two years (shown below). This is the earliest known meme using the graph. On the same day, the Redditor posted a template of the meme to /r/MemeEconomy,^[5] gaining over 20,000 upvotes (see "Templates").

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On December 19th, 2020, Redditor Snelly_WorldCrusher then posted a new version of the meme to /r/gaming^[6] about the speed that PlayStation 5 consoles sell out at, gaining over 13,000 upvotes in two years (shown below).

On December 21st, 2020, Guy Fieri Instagram^[7] meme account flavortownusa posted a version of the meme, gaining over 4,400 likes in two years (shown below, left). On January 5th, 2021, Redditor supercellx posted a version of the meme to /r/dankmemes^[8] about the speed of rule 34 artists, gaining over 19,000 upvotes in a year (shown below, right).

On April 4th, Instagram^[9] user mightyfinememe posted a version of the meme using a tape measure returning as the fastest thing on earth, gaining over 60,000 likes in a year (shown below).

On June 4th, 2022, Instagram^[10] user wwwchesscom posted a version of the meme using the chess move "En Passant" as the fastest thing on earth, gaining over 14,000 likes in two days (shown below).