This Shit Does Not Look Good on Paper

Submission 382

About

This Shit Does Not Look Good on Paper refers to a series of memes based on a photograph in which two IRS agents lay out a print-out of a threatening tweet showing a bomb vest rigged with explosives in front of the person who made the threat. The photograph and its caption have inspired an exploitable meme format, with users making a post that implies a threat or something illegal and following up with an edit of the photograph later.

Origin

Prior to December 19th, 2022, X / Twitter user @CoreyPilat posted a photograph of a fake explosive vest, writing, "If the IRS knocks at my door I'm answering with this bitch on."

On December 19th, @CoreyPilat then posted a photograph of a printout of the tweet lying on the table next to two people who are supposedly IRS agents. The photograph, captioned, "This shit does not look good on paper," garnered over 14,000 reposts and 143,000 likes on X^[1] in two years (posts shown below).

Spread

On December 20th, 2022, X^[2] user @upblissed posted screenshots of both posts, commenting, "they bold as fuck for knocking on the door." The post (shown below) received over 20,000 reposts and 270,000 likes in two years.

In the following months, the post achieved virality as a meme format, with users making posts that implied a threat or something illegal and following them up with another post with the caption. For example, on March 13th, 2023, X^[3] user @hunter_hhhh used the caption in a post that garnered over 2,100 reposts and 43,000 likes in one year (shown below).

On May 19th, 2024, iFunny^[4] user lsmynametoolong posted an edit that received over 1,200 smiles in four months (shown below).

The meme format maintained its presence online in 2024, with the caption used both together and separately as a catchphrase with the image.