Aerial banner in sky reading Greg Abbott Is A Little Piss Baby in red text

Greg Abbott Is A Little Piss Baby

2022catchphrasedead

Published August 11, 2026

Greg Abbott Is A Little Piss Baby is a September 2022 protest catchphrase that started as a moderation rule on /r/PoliticalHumor mocking Texas Governor Greg Abbott. It began as a stunt against Texas House Bill 20, which limits how large social media platforms can moderate user content.

political satire memes catchphrase memes protest memes reddit memes

Overview

Greg Abbott Is A Little Piss Baby is a protest catchphrase aimed at Texas Governor Greg Abbott after he signed House Bill 20 into law on September 9, 20211. HB 20 restricts how large social media platforms (those with more than 50 million US monthly users) moderate content, barring them from removing posts based on the user's viewpoint1. Critics argued the law forced private platforms to host speech they would otherwise take down, and legal challenges pushed the case up to the Supreme Court, which paused the law in May 2022 before the Fifth Circuit revived it that September3.

The insult itself started as a stunt moderation rule on /r/PoliticalHumor, where mods declared they would ban any commenter who did not include the phrase 'Greg Abbott is a little piss baby'3. The bit was that the subreddit was openly discriminating on viewpoint to expose the absurdity of HB 20's neutrality requirement2. The phrase quickly outgrew the sub and turned into a generic anti-Abbott jab across Twitter and other platforms.

Origin & Background

Platform
Reddit (/r/PoliticalHumor)
Creator
/r/PoliticalHumor moderators
Date
2022

On September 23, 2022, a week after the Fifth Circuit reinstated HB 20, moderators at /r/PoliticalHumor posted the new subreddit rule3. The post argued that HB 20's language was so vague that mods 'must allow discussion about human cannibalization' if users insisted cannibalization was wrong, and it noted that most Reddit mods are unpaid volunteers who do not live in Texas3. The mods closed by writing that the sub was 'explicitly censoring the viewpoint that Greg Abbott isn't a little piss baby,' and the announcement pulled over 5,500 upvotes in its first four days2.

How It Spread

The subreddit filled with piss-baby posts within a day. A Letterkenny-format image posted September 24 by u/Fatman365 hit roughly 6,900 upvotes in three days, and a similar entry the next day cleared 8,3003. On September 25, redditor Takpusseh-yamp uploaded a photo of a plane trailing a banner reading 'Greg Abbott is a little piss baby' over Austin, Texas, which pulled around 6,700 upvotes4.

Coverage jumped off Reddit on September 26, when Techdirt writer Mike Masnick published a piece framing the stunt as a live demonstration of HB 20's contradictions2. Masnick's tweet linking the article picked up more than 4,200 likes the same day5. Later that day a /r/OutOfTheLoop post asking what the phrase meant hit around 5,000 upvotes as outside audiences tried to catch up on the joke4.

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How to Use This Meme

The line is typically dropped into unrelated Reddit comments, tweets, or replies as a non-sequitur signature aimed at Greg Abbott, often paired with image-macro formats like the Letterkenny 'How are ya now?' template3. A common convention is to force the phrase into any political thread involving Texas, mirroring the original /r/PoliticalHumor rule that every comment had to contain it2.

Frequently Asked Questions