Historical painting of a public guillotine execution with soldiers and crowd

Guillotine

2011image macroclassic

Published October 24, 2026

On Twitter in 2019 and 2020, posting a photo of a guillotine became a standard reply to any tweet from a wealthy celebrity complaining about pandemic lockdown or everyday inconveniences1. Netizens had been joking about the beheading device online since October 2011, when it appeared in a Smosh roundup of Troll Dad macros3. By April 2020, She-Ra voice actor Aimee Carrero reporting death threats over one such post ignited the #IStandWithLesbianBabadook hashtag7.

protest memes privilege class memes political satire memes dark humor memes eat the rich memes

Overview

Guillotine replies work as a punchline about class, aimed at posts from wealthy figures that strike readers as oblivious to how working people live1. A typical post sets a quoted tweet next to a photo or drawing of the device, sometimes labeled "Plan C" and sometimes captioned with phrases like "Anyone got a spare guillotine?"10. French Revolution imagery supplies most of the aesthetic, with Marie Antoinette and the Reign of Terror often invoked by name1.

Variations lean into dark cartoon imagery, like Pepe the Frog getting beheaded or Bernie Sanders sketching a blade on a whiteboard49. Humor relies on contrast: a billionaire's tweet about missing their yacht followed by nothing but a drawing of the National Razor8. Some posters go for direct text ("eat the rich") while others post only the image with no comment, trusting the reader to connect it to the quoted post1.

The guillotine meme sits inside a wider "eat the rich" vocabulary that spiked during 2019 and 2020 as income inequality discussion filled social media8. Teen Vogue described the online use as a continuation of working-class iconography that stretches back to the 1789 storming of the Bastille, with Madame Guillotine and Madame Deficit (Marie Antoinette) treated as recurring symbols of dissident femininity1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Smosh (earliest known meme) / Twitter and Reddit (viral political use)
Date
2011

The physical device predates the meme by two centuries. French doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed decapitation by a mechanical blade in late 1789 as a more humane alternative to axes and swords, and a prototype was constructed by a German harpsichord maker named Tobias Schmidt2. The machine claimed its first official victim in April 1792 and became a central symbol of the Reign of Terror; Guillotin himself opposed capital punishment and tried to distance himself from the machine, which his family later petitioned to have renamed2.

Earliest known meme appearance came on October 13th, 2011, when comedy site Smosh included a guillotine image in a roundup titled "The Best of Troll Dad"3. Political use is a separate story. Backlash catalyst for the modern form came in 2019 and 2020, when Twitter arguments over wealth, worker treatment, and celebrity complaints about pandemic lockdown drew the symbol into daily reply culture112. By early 2020, enough replies were landing in people's mentions that r/OutOfTheLoop readers were asking what the posts meant5.

How It Spread

Reddit documented the format first. On July 10th, 2017, user villageelliot posted a comic of Pepe getting beheaded to r/MemeEconomy, where it earned more than 190 points at 99% upvoted4. By February 15th, 2019, enough guillotine replies were showing up on Twitter that r/OutOfTheLoop user SkeletalRealty asked for an explanation; the thread sketched the class-politics backstory for confused readers and reached 140 points5. A Facebook group called "Guillotine Memes Bring Communist Dreams" opened on April 15th that year and gathered more than 10,100 followers within twelve months11.

Mainstream coverage followed in late 2019. Teen Vogue ran a feature in November tracing the imagery back to Madame Guillotine and Marie Antoinette, describing the online usage as part of a working-class resistance lineage1. StayHipp covered the April 2020 cluster of "eat the rich" posts in its own explainer8. On March 3rd, 2020, Redditor Matsk1 posted a joke comparing a severed-head optical illusion to the French Revolution to r/dankmemes, where it accumulated over 74,300 points in a month6.

The format turned combustible in early April 2020. On April 8th, She-Ra voice actor Aimee Carrero posted "Death threats from 'fans' are super fun!" and shared a guillotine meme from Twitter user @LesbianBabadook that had not tagged her, igniting the hashtag #IStandWithLesbianBabadook7. The same day, @notallbhas tweeted an image of Bernie Sanders drawing a guillotine labeled "Plan C" on a whiteboard, with the caption "Bernie Sanders is already my president," which earned over 280 likes in six days9. One day later, Twitter user @jonas_nordqvist replied "Anyone got a spare guillotine?" to Ellen DeGeneres comparing her mansion to a jail during lockdown10.

Timeline

1789

Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposes the mechanical blade to the French government as a more humane execution method[2].

1792-04

The guillotine claims its first official victim in France[2].

2011-10-13

Smosh posts the earliest known guillotine meme as part of a "Best of Troll Dad" roundup[3].

2017-07-10

Redditor villageelliot posts a Pepe beheading comic to r/MemeEconomy; it earns over 190 points[4].

How to Use This Meme

A guillotine post works as a reply, not a standalone joke. Users quote-tweet or screenshot a comment from a wealthy or famous figure that reads as oblivious to working-class life, then attach an image of the device without extra commentary1. Common conventions include labeling the blade "Plan C" to escalate a political debate9, invoking the French Revolution directly, or posting only the line "Anyone got a spare guillotine?" as the full reply10. Captions sometimes go further into direct "eat the rich" territory, especially on Facebook pages dedicated to the format11.

Frequently Asked Questions