This Will Affect the Economy / Trout Population

Submission 38,528

Part of a series on COVID-19 Pandemic. [View Related Entries]

About

This Will Affect the Economy, also known as This Will Affect the Trout Population and several other phrases, is a phrasal template used together with image macros depicting global disasters and doomsday scenarios. The format is used to humorously highlight preoccupation with the economy or other things in situations threatening much larger issues, originally in connotation with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Origin

On March 28th, 2020, Twitter^[1] user @Ygrene made a humorous tweet parodying the U.S. government's reaction to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, building a metaphor with dinosaurs being preoccupied with saving the economy during their extinction event. The tweet received over 69,100 retweets and 317,200 likes in one year (shown below).

Spread

On March 29th, 2020, Twitter^[2] user @JamesJenx replied with the first humorous image based on the joke (shown below). The tweet received over 220 retweets and 880 likes, with the meme being widely circulated in the following months.^[3]

The meme did not spawn a format until October 29th, 2020, when an unknown Redditor posted the first derivative meme based on the joke to the /r/okbuddyretard^[4] subreddit (shown below, left). The post received over 43,000 upvotes and was circulated^[5] online in the following months.

The format went viral in December 2020, after a December 7th post by Instagram^[6] user ohwack, who posted a version of the image reading "This Will Affect The Trout Population I Think" (authorship unconfirmed; shown below, right). The post gained over 48,000 likes in eight months and was reposted by multiple accounts in the following days, including an /r/okbuddyretard^[7] repost that received over 6,400 upvotes.

The post inspired multiple versions of the meme in the following weeks. For example, on December 9th, 2020, Redditor^[8] ChiefShirox posted a meme that gained over 2,300 upvotes in /r/okbuddyretard prior to being removed (shown below, left). On February 10th, 2021, Redditor^[9] lexvi1 posted a Titanfall version of the meme that gained over 7,600 upvotes in /r/titanfall in six months (shown below, right).

The format maintained popularity in 2021 with several notable versions going viral.