Titanic Lobsters

Submission 30,043

Part of a series on Titanic (James Cameron Film). [View Related Entries]

About

Titanic Lobsters refers to a series of memes based on the idea that live lobsters stored in the kitchen of the passenger liner Titanic would be celebrating the sinking of the ship. The trope originated in 2011 with a Twitter joke and gained notable spread in memes on Reddit in May 2019.

Origin

On October 4th, 2011, Twitter user @SpacemanQuisp tweeted a joke based on the premise that sinking of British passenger liner Titanic in 1912 would be a miraculous event for the live lobsters stored in the ship's kitchen (shown below).^[1] The tweet received 34 retweets and 22 likes. On the same day, Twitter account @Funnyoneliners copied the joke, promoting its further spread in the following months.^[2]

It's all about perspective. The sinking of the Titanic was a miracle to the lobsters in the ship's kitchen.

Spread

In the following years, the joke received significant spread on Twitter, including reposts by users @itsWillyFerrell^[3] and @BillMurray^[4] which gained over 520 retweets and 950 retweets respectively. Additionally, the quote was added to the quotes section on literature cataloging website Goodreads.^[5]

In May 2019, the joke gained popularity as a phrasal template on Reddit. On May 9th, 2019, Reddit user chungus23 made a Happiness Noise meme using the joke, with the post gaining over 23,300 upvotes in five days (shown below).^[6]

In the following days, the phrasal format gained further spread on Reddit, with notable posts appearing in /r/memes^[7] and /r/LuthuanianKittens^[8] subreddits.