Pepe the Frog in an orange shirt reading 'Down with Cis' and the caption 'you know it pepe'

Down With Cis

2015catchphraseclassic

Published October 15, 2026

"Down With Cis" started as an April 2015 Tumblr story about a cis person allegedly beaten up by a gang wearing matching slogan t-shirts, a tale so implausible that trans Tumblr users adopted the phrase as a joke within weeks. By May 2015, photoshops of Buck Dewey, Pepe the Frog and Homura Akemi holding the shirts turned the fabricated bus of assailants into a running Tumblr gag.

tumblr memes gender discourse memes hoax memes lgbtq memes trolling memes

Overview

Posts riff on the imagined "down with cis bus," a vehicle supposedly transporting cis-hating assailants between drive-by beatings1. Image edits put the slogan on t-shirts worn by cartoon and anime characters, with Buck Dewey from Steven Universe and Pepe the Frog among the earliest subjects34.

Text posts ask readers to reblog if they ride the bus, whether it hosts parties, or how to buy a ticket, functioning as flame-trolling bait aimed at users who might take the premise seriously56. Because the slogan reads as either sincere cisphobia or a parody of it, trans Tumblr users treat the whole bit as a case of Poe's Law, with the joke sitting in the ambiguity itself8.

Origin & Background

Platform
Tumblr
Date
2015

On April 4, 2015, Tumblr user ForeverHonest shared an anecdote describing a friend being ambushed by a group in matching "Down With Cis" shirts and beaten in a drive-by style attack, a post that drew more than 9,000 notes within a month1. The implausibility of a coordinated t-shirt gang, combined with echoes of "that happened" Reddit storytelling, led readers across political alignments to suspect the story was fabricated or a satire of standard Tumblr violence anecdotes8.

How It Spread

On April 7, 2015, transgirlnausicaa posted a mockup of an actual "Down With Cis" t-shirt listed on Zazzle, attracting around 740 notes over the first month2. The tag stayed quiet until May 4, when sistermeme photoshopped Steven Universe character Buck Dewey holding the shirt, collecting over 6,300 notes in 48 hours3.

May 5 brought the format into full circulation. Alienspeed shared a Pepe the Frog edition in a "rare pepe" post4, Skyerin asked riders of the "down with cis bus" to reblog and drew over 4,500 notes5, and Sourcefieldmix wondered aloud whether the bus also threw parties, collecting roughly 2,600 notes6. YouTuber Vivid Grim edited a Puella Magi Madoka Magica scene to give Homura Akemi the shirt that same day9.

On May 6, Tumblr user Chandra Nalaar compiled roughly 30 earnest reactions from people who had believed the original hoax, drawing more than 4,200 notes and cementing the joke as a trap for the credulous7. Urban Dictionary entries from the same period show the ambivalence baked in: one definition frames the phrase as sincere trans activism, another as an anti-cis call to violence, and a third just points to the bus10.

Timeline

2015-04-04

Tumblr user ForeverHonest posts the "Down With Cis" gang-attack story that becomes the hoax at the center of the meme.

2015-04-07

Transgirlnausicaa posts a mockup of a real Zazzle t-shirt bearing the slogan.

2015-05-04

Sistermeme photoshops Steven Universe character Buck Dewey holding the shirt, drawing over 6,300 notes in two days.

2015-05-05

Alienspeed posts a Pepe the Frog edition and Skyerin and Sourcefieldmix build out the "down with cis bus" joke; Vivid Grim uploads the Homura Akemi edit to YouTube.

2015-05-06

Chandra Nalaar compiles about 30 reactions from users who believed the original hoax, drawing more than 4,200 notes.

Frequently Asked Questions