The Lion, The Witch, And The Audacity Of This Bitch

Confirmed 176,025

About

The Lion, The Witch, and The Audacity Of This Bitch is a phrase and reaction image that became popular in image macros on Reddit and Facebook during 2020. The phrase is a play on the title of the 1950 novel "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" by C. S. Lewis, the first in The Chronicles of Narnia series. The phrase is popular on its own, used as a title and caption in various posts across social media, and is also associated with an image from the film adaptation of the novel as an image macro. It is used to criticize an opinion or statement that the poster doesn't agree with.

Origin

The earliest known public instance of the phrase was uploaded to Facebook on December 12th, 2019 as a simple text post by the page The Eternal Dreamers.^[1] On December 15th, 2019, Facebook meme page Meme'N posted a text post featuring the same phrase over a different background, garnering over 1,800 reactions, 1,700 comments, and 28,000 shares in 11 months (shown below). The text post was reposted by multiple Facebook meme pages throughout December and January.^[2]^[3]

On July 19th, 2020, Redditor Flaffelll^[4] posted an image macro featuring the phrase over top of a promotional image from "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" film to /r/rareinsults (shown below). This is one of the earliest known public posts of the image macro.

Spread

On July 19th, 2020, Redditor RealChronicle posted a version of the meme to /r/memes, garnering over 23,000 upvotes in 3 months (shown below, left). On July 20th, Redditor yeborne uploaded an HD template of the image to /r/MemeTemplatesOfficial.^[5] On the same day, Facebook page Launceston Memes^[6] posted a version of the meme, garnering over 500 reactions and 80 shares in 3 months (shown below, right).

The meme continued to spread across social media throughout the year, with a focus on Reddit and Facebook.^[7]^[8]