This Website Is Free

Submission 25,452

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

About

This Website Is Free is a popular catchphrase used to caption screenshots of various interactions on Twitter. The phrase highlights the types of things found on the website, which likely could not be found elsewhere on the internet.

Origin

The earliest known usage of the phrase was posted by Twitter^[1] user @dmonz2000 on April 16th, 2012 (shown below). That day, they posted "This website is free." However, the post was not coupled with a screenshot or appeared to be in reference to anything in particular.

Spread

Two years later, on January 20th, 2015, Twitter^[2] user @fergoe retweeted (shown below, left) an image of former United States Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz's face superimposed over the Samuel Adams beer logo with the caption, "This website is free. Never forget."

Later that year, on July 31st, Twitter^[3] user @AzeemTeam tweeted an interaction between CBS sports commentator Pete Prisco and another Twitter user. They captioned the screenshot, "Dog I am CRYING. I can't believe this website is free." The post (shown below, center) received more than 50 retweets and 50 likes in two and a half years.

On January 9th, 2017, Twitter^[4] @god_hates_jags tweeted two posted from Tomi Lahren, who contradicts herself in a series of tweets. The post (shown below, right) received more than 43,000 retweets and 99,000 likes in a little over one year.

The following year, Twitter^[5] user @nrrrdcore tweeted an interaction of a man assuming that a sculpture was made by a western, white man, before being corrected with the fact that the sculpture was made by a Chinese woman. The post (shown below) received more than 20,000 retweets and 70,000 likes.

About three weeks later, on March 22nd, The Daily Dot ^[6] posted an article about the meme.