What is A Large Boulder The Size Of A Small Boulder?

It is a viral Twitter catchphrase from a January 27th, 2020 tweet by Colorado's San Miguel Sheriff account describing a boulder blocking Highway 145.

Where did A Large Boulder The Size Of A Small Boulder come from?

It came from @SheriffAlert, the official Twitter account of the San Miguel Sheriff's Office in southwestern Colorado, in a roadblock warning post.

What does A Large Boulder The Size Of A Small Boulder mean?

It is a tautology: the boulder's size is described by comparing it to another boulder, which gives no real information and reads as accidentally funny.

How do you use A Large Boulder The Size Of A Small Boulder?

People typically quote-tweet or caption images with the phrase, often swapping the object while keeping the self-referential "the size of a small [X]" structure, as @devon__palmer did with the "everybody gangster until" format.

Is A Large Boulder The Size Of A Small Boulder still popular?

It is a classic 2020 Twitter moment that still gets referenced when official accounts post unintentionally funny alerts, though the peak virality was the 24 hours after the original post.

A Large Boulder The Size Of A Small Boulder

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Published August 2, 2026

A Large Boulder The Size Of A Small Boulder is a Twitter catchphrase from a January 2020 roadblock warning by Colorado's San Miguel Sheriff account. The tautological description of a boulder was mocked and remixed heavily within 24 hours, turning a routine traffic alert into one of the most quoted lines of that week.

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Overview

A Large Boulder The Size Of A Small Boulder is a phrasal gaffe from a January 2020 tweet by the San Miguel Sheriff's Office in Colorado, warning drivers about a rock blocking Highway 1451. The line reads as an unintentional tautology, comparing the boulder's size to another boulder rather than any useful reference object, and Twitter latched onto it almost immediately3.

The joke is entirely in the wording. The original photo shows a genuinely large rock sitting in a snowy road, so users spun the caption into shape jokes, identity gags, and captioned reaction posts within hours of the alert going out2 3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter

Creator

@SheriffAlert

Date

2020

On January 27th, 2020, the @SheriffAlert account posted a photo of a snow-dusted stretch of Colorado Highway 145 at mile marker 78 near Silverpick Road, with the caption noting a "Large boulder the size of a small boulder" was blocking the east-bound lane and asking drivers to watch for emergency vehicles1. The wording drew over 162,800 likes and 31,400 retweets within a single day3.

The San Miguel Sheriff's Office covers the Telluride area of southwestern Colorado, and the alert itself was a routine traffic notification before commenters zeroed in on the phrasing1.

How It Spread

Later that same day, @GPollowitz quote-tweeted the original with "this small boulder identifies as a large boulder," pulling in more than 1,800 likes and 250 retweets in a day4. Around the same time, @austin_mcbrown posted a mock stock chart labeled "science" with the caption "Man that there boulder is so large it looks kinda small," which picked up around 6,900 likes2.

On January 28th, 2020, @devon__palmer tweeted "Everybody gangster until the large boulder the size of a small boulder shows up," fitting the line into the popular "everybody gangster until" template and gaining about 4,700 likes and 880 retweets in a day5. The catchphrase kept circulating as a shorthand for tautological or self-referential descriptions and is still pulled out whenever an official account posts an unintentionally funny alert3.

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How to Use This Meme

The catchphrase is typically deployed as a reply or quote-tweet whenever someone describes an object by comparing it to itself, or as a caption on any photo of an oddly obvious hazard. A common convention is to swap "boulder" for the actual object while keeping the "[X] the size of a small [X]" structure intact for the joke to land.