What is I'd Sell You To Satan For One Corn Chip?

A reaction image featuring a watercolor painting by Matt Adrian of a wide-eyed bird captioned 'I'd sell you to satan for one corn chip,' from his 2012 book The Mincing Mockingbird Guide To Troubled Birds.

Where did I'd Sell You To Satan For One Corn Chip come from?

The painting first appeared in Matt Adrian's artbook published on March 8, 2012, and reached wider circulation when Tumblr user mercerism posted scanned pages on January 10, 2013.

What does I'd Sell You To Satan For One Corn Chip mean?

The caption reads as a joke about hating someone enough to trade them to the devil for a cheap snack, used online as a passive-aggressive way to signal secret contempt, as stephanievex framed it against 'Oh, shut up, you know you love me!'.

How do you use I'd Sell You To Satan For One Corn Chip?

Posters attach the bird painting to a setup line about a clingy or smug person, or run redraws that keep the pose and swap the species, like the 2019 Articuno version from Tumblr page surfacage.

Is I'd Sell You To Satan For One Corn Chip still popular?

The image stayed in heavy Instagram use through 2020, with duppley's dog-shelter YouTube thumbnail version passing 70,000 likes that November, and Know Your Meme files it among the Troubled Birds series.

I'd Sell You To Satan For One Corn Chip

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Published October 27, 2026

Matt Adrian painted a wide-eyed brown bird labeled 'I'd sell you to satan for one corn chip' for his 2012 artbook on troubled birds, and scans of the page hit Tumblr the next January. By March 2015, a stephanievex post pairing the painting with the caption 'Oh, shut up, you know you love me!' passed a million notes and fixed the image as a reaction for passive-aggressive hatred.

image macro memes reaction memes tumblr memes captioned animal memes delayed virality memes

Overview

Posts rely on the gap between the bird's soft watercolor styling and the brutal line underneath. A standard image macro keeps Adrian's painting intact and places a setup caption above the frame, so the reader hears the corn chip threat as the speaker's inner monologue when a clingy friend or smug acquaintance opens their mouth1 3.

Variations include text-thread screenshots that drop the painting in as a sticker-style reply6, YouTube thumbnail swaps where the bird reacts to the headline9, and full redraws that keep the composition but change the species. A June 2019 Tumblr redraw replacing the brown bird with an Articuno carried the format into Pokémon fan circles8. Fans trade it under cloying DMs, as a comment on reunion posts, and as a quote-reply to anyone fishing for compliments5.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Print artbook / Tumblr (viral spread)

Creator

Matt Adrian

Date

2012

Matt Adrian of The Mincing Mockingbird, half of a husband-wife bird-art shop, published The Mincing Mockingbird Guide To Troubled Birds on March 8, 20121. The hardback collects his watercolor paintings of agitated songbirds paired with aggressive captions, including a round-eyed brown bird under the line 'I'd sell you to satan for one corn chip'1. Online circulation began on January 10, 2013, when Tumblr user mercerism uploaded scanned pages from the book, including the corn chip bird, and the post passed 105,000 notes2.

How It Spread

The painting hit its viral moment on March 12, 2015, when Tumblr user stephanievex captioned it 'when someone says, "Oh, shut up, you know you love me!":' The post passed a million notes within six months and spilled over to iFunny screenshots and Facebook reposts3 4. Casual recycling followed on Imgur, where a November 15, 2015 upload set the painting inside a text-message screenshot to shut down a pun-cracking friend5. Instagram picks came later, with thedancersresource running a dance-studio variant on December 19, 20176.

Fandom reuse kept the bird in rotation. On January 23, 2019, Twitter user @cphrseok paired the painting with K-pop group BTS and the 'Run' music video, drawing more than 2,800 likes and 1,400 retweets, with the screenshot bouncing to Instagram through @bts.bangtonboys7. On June 20, 2019, Tumblr page surfacage posted an Articuno redraw that pulled in over 7,000 notes and later found another audience on Pokémon mythology accounts in 20218.

Instagram meme pages gave the image its biggest 2020 push. On November 4, 2020, tiktok.trashposting and rheepz each posted a version placing the bird next to a YouTube thumbnail reading 'Dog Thrilled to See Owners At Shelter But They're There To Adopt Different Dog,' and duppley reshared it on November 20, where it passed 70,000 likes9 10.

Timeline

2012-03-08

Matt Adrian publishes The Mincing Mockingbird Guide To Troubled Birds, which includes the corn chip bird painting.

2013-01-10

Tumblr user mercerism posts scans from the book, including the corn chip bird, passing 105,000 notes.

2017-12-19

Instagram user thedancersresource posts a dance-studio version of the meme.

How to Use This Meme

Posters typically keep Adrian's painting unedited and add a setup line above it describing what someone just said or did, so the caption reads as the hidden feelings of the person stuck listening. A common convention is to use it as a reply image under tweets or texts where somebody is being needy, smug or presumptuous, as stephanievex did with 'Oh, shut up, you know you love me!'3. Redraws keep the pose but swap in another animal or character for the bird8.