Why Do They Call It Oven?

About

Why Do They Call It Oven? refers to a nonsensical copypasta reading, "Why do they call it oven when you of in the cold food of out hot eat the food?" The copypasta later became associated with an edited Garfield strip with Jon Arbuckle saying the phrase, causing it to be associated with the comic.

Origin

On August 31, 2013, Twitter^[1] user YashichiDSF posted a tweet that read, "why do they call it oven when you of in the cold food of out hot eat the food" (shown below).

Spread

The question appeared on Reddit's /r/askreddit^[2] on September 5th, 2018, though it gained no points. The phrase started gaining attention after Tumblr^[3] user ewaneneollav posted a still from Garfield with Jon Arbuckle asking the question on August 20th, 2019, gaining over 79,000 notes (shown below, left). The picture and its ensuing thread grew popular outside of Tumblr; for example, on December 20th, 2019, the picture appeared in Reddit's /r/BrandNewSentence,^[4] gaining over 1,800 points (shown below, right).

The phrase began seeing use in several meme templates over the course of 2020. Oftentimes, these would be associated with Garfield. For example, on March 20th, 2020, Twitter user @blushbuns^[5] tweeted a fake poster with the phrase and Garfield, gaining over 2,200 retweets and 5,900 likes (shown below, left). On March 21st, 2021, Redditor ToastyGhost37 posted a Panzer of the Lake variation in /r/VShojo,^[6] gaining over 550 points (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References