Pizza Crimes

2013Catchphrase / image collection / community conceptactive

Also known as: Crimes Against Pizza

Pizza Crimes is a 2013 Twitter catchphrase for sharing images of pizza orders, cooking disasters, and unconventional toppings, evolving into a Reddit community of over 222,000 members dedicated to cataloging pizza offenses.

Pizza Crimes is an internet catchphrase and community concept referring to images of pizza orders, cooking disasters, and unorthodox toppings that users consider disgraceful to the dish. The term took shape around 2013 on Twitter, where people began documenting their drunk pizza mishaps, and later grew into a thriving Reddit community with over 222,000 members dedicated to cataloging the worst offenses against pizza worldwide2.

pizza memescatchphrase memessubreddit origin memesfood memescourtroom memes

Overview

Pizza Crimes refers to photos and stories of pizza that has been mistreated, mutilated, or topped with ingredients widely considered unacceptable. The concept treats pizza as something sacred and any deviation from broadly accepted norms as a punishable offense. Common categories include burnt disasters, bizarre toppings (kiwi, banana, curry), malformed shapes, improper cutting patterns, and general disrespect toward what many consider the world's most perfect food2.

The community around pizza crimes uses courtroom language for comedic effect. Subscribers on Reddit's r/PizzaCrimes call themselves "jury members," and posts frame offending pizzas as evidence in an ongoing trial against bad taste2. The meme works because pizza is one of the few foods with near-universal popularity, consumed at a rate of roughly 5 billion pies per year globally, making crimes against it feel personally offensive to a huge audience2.

The earliest recorded use of "pizza crimes" as a concept dates to October 17, 2013, when Twitter user @MaggieMcGilly posted about a pizza she'd accidentally burned beyond recognition4. The tweet itself was unremarkable at the time, picking up only six likes. But it caught the attention of BuzzFeed writer Katie Notopoulos, who included it in a listicle titled "30 Crimes Against Pizza Committed By Drunk People"1. That article compiled tweets from people documenting their drunk pizza disasters: cooking a pizza at 20 degrees for 350 minutes, placing one in the oven upside down, eating the paper plate instead of the pizza, and one person who folded a slice of shrimp pizza and stuffed it in her purse1.

The BuzzFeed piece gave the @MaggieMcGilly tweet wider exposure and established "pizza crime" as a recognizable category of internet content4. Before this, people posted photos of pizza gone wrong without a unifying label. The article provided that label.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (earliest usage), BuzzFeed (popularization), Reddit (community hub)
Key People
@MaggieMcGilly, Katie Notopoulos
Date
2013

The earliest recorded use of "pizza crimes" as a concept dates to October 17, 2013, when Twitter user @MaggieMcGilly posted about a pizza she'd accidentally burned beyond recognition. The tweet itself was unremarkable at the time, picking up only six likes. But it caught the attention of BuzzFeed writer Katie Notopoulos, who included it in a listicle titled "30 Crimes Against Pizza Committed By Drunk People". That article compiled tweets from people documenting their drunk pizza disasters: cooking a pizza at 20 degrees for 350 minutes, placing one in the oven upside down, eating the paper plate instead of the pizza, and one person who folded a slice of shrimp pizza and stuffed it in her purse.

The BuzzFeed piece gave the @MaggieMcGilly tweet wider exposure and established "pizza crime" as a recognizable category of internet content. Before this, people posted photos of pizza gone wrong without a unifying label. The article provided that label.

How It Spread

After the BuzzFeed article established the terminology, pizza crime content spread steadily across Twitter and Reddit through the mid-to-late 2010s. Users began tagging their own pizza disasters and discoveries with variations of "pizza crime" and "crimes against pizza."

The dedicated subreddit r/PizzaCrimes launched on December 29, 2019. By June 2021, it had attracted over 65,000 subscribers. Growth accelerated from there. The subreddit's most upvoted post of a genuine pizza crime during that early period was titled "R(post)eddit," uploaded by u/SpyCGL, showing a Twitter image of a pizza with an absurd amount of extra crust. It pulled in over 6,700 upvotes and 68 comments within three months.

The community grew to over 222,000 "jury members" as documented by Bored Panda, which ran a feature highlighting 50 of the subreddit's worst offenses. The article noted common crime categories that had emerged on the subreddit: Malformed, Cursed, Fruit, Dropped, Mistreated, Meme, Identity Theft, and Satire.

One post that picked up traction was u/LouisPei's submission of a "midwest sushi" pizza created by LoPiez Pizza, a roll-style creation that blurred the line between pizza and something else entirely.

Pizza crimes also spread through broader food-shaming communities on Reddit. In 2022, a post on r/shittyfoodporn went viral when u/ImMelissaning shared a photo of Altoona-style pizza from a restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The image showed six slices featuring thick dough, marinara, salami, bell peppers, and American cheese cut into squares. It racked up 17,000 upvotes and 1,300 comments, with one Pennsylvania resident writing: "As a representative of the PA gang, [I'd] like to apologize for whatever the f*ck this is and assure you that Altoona does not represent the rest of the state". Another commenter noted that the Altoona Hotel, where the style originated, had burned down years earlier, prompting the reply: "Yet, somehow, the fire failed to kill this monstrosity".

How to Use This Meme

Pizza crimes follow a simple format. Users typically:

1

Encounter or create a pizza that violates common pizza conventions

2

Photograph the evidence

3

Post it to r/PizzaCrimes, Twitter, or another platform with language framing the pizza as a criminal offense

Cultural Impact

Pizza crimes tapped into a broader internet fascination with food shaming and the debate over acceptable pizza toppings. The Hawaiian pizza debate, which predates the pizza crimes community by decades, gave the concept built-in cultural energy. Sam Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant in Ontario, first combined ham and pineapple on pizza in the 1960s, inspired by American-Chinese sweet-and-salty flavor pairings. The controversy around that single topping choice has fueled decades of food discourse, with the president of Iceland even declaring in 2017 that he'd ban it if he could.

The pizza crimes community positioned itself as going beyond the pineapple debate. As Bored Panda put it: "If you think pineapple on pizza is controversial, you haven't seen anything yet". Swedish pizza restaurants serving banana and curry pizza, pizzas topped with whole chickens, and creations featuring french fries and kiwi all made the list of offenses.

Media outlets including Newsweek picked up individual pizza crime stories, with the Altoona-style pizza post generating its own article exploring the history of the regional style. The newspaper traced Altoona-style pizza back to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette clipping from October 13, 1996, which identified the Altoona Hotel as the first location to serve the dish.

Fun Facts

The r/PizzaCrimes subreddit categorizes offenses into formal charge types including "Malformed," "Cursed," "Fruit," "Dropped," "Mistreated," and "Identity Theft".

One of the earliest documented pizza crimes involved someone so drunk they tried to warm their pizza in the fridge and stood waiting for it to beep.

A drunk duo denied service at a Eugene, Oregon pizza place reportedly used moonshine to light it on fire.

Tom Hanks was once photographed photobombing a drunk person at a pizza restaurant, and the image circulated as a wholesome pizza crime adjacent moment.

Experimental psychologist Charles Spence at the University of Oxford has studied why sweet toppings on pizza work for some people, noting that "sweet is the most-liked taste, so it is an easy win".

Derivatives & Variations

Altoona-style pizza discourse:

A specific subset of pizza crime content focused on this Pennsylvania regional style featuring American cheese on thick dough, which went viral after a Reddit post in 2022[3].

Drunk pizza crimes:

The original sub-genre documented by BuzzFeed, focused specifically on pizza disasters caused by intoxication, including cooking at wrong temperatures, eating plates, and storing pizza in purses[1].

Midwest sushi pizza:

A roll-style pizza creation by LoPiez Pizza that was posted to r/PizzaCrimes and sparked debate about where pizza ends and another food begins[4].

Frequently Asked Questions

Pizza Crimes

2013Catchphrase / image collection / community conceptactive

Also known as: Crimes Against Pizza

Pizza Crimes is a 2013 Twitter catchphrase for sharing images of pizza orders, cooking disasters, and unconventional toppings, evolving into a Reddit community of over 222,000 members dedicated to cataloging pizza offenses.

Pizza Crimes is an internet catchphrase and community concept referring to images of pizza orders, cooking disasters, and unorthodox toppings that users consider disgraceful to the dish. The term took shape around 2013 on Twitter, where people began documenting their drunk pizza mishaps, and later grew into a thriving Reddit community with over 222,000 members dedicated to cataloging the worst offenses against pizza worldwide.

pizza memes catchphrase memes subreddit origin memes food memes courtroom memes

Overview

Pizza Crimes refers to photos and stories of pizza that has been mistreated, mutilated, or topped with ingredients widely considered unacceptable. The concept treats pizza as something sacred and any deviation from broadly accepted norms as a punishable offense. Common categories include burnt disasters, bizarre toppings (kiwi, banana, curry), malformed shapes, improper cutting patterns, and general disrespect toward what many consider the world's most perfect food.

The community around pizza crimes uses courtroom language for comedic effect. Subscribers on Reddit's r/PizzaCrimes call themselves "jury members," and posts frame offending pizzas as evidence in an ongoing trial against bad taste. The meme works because pizza is one of the few foods with near-universal popularity, consumed at a rate of roughly 5 billion pies per year globally, making crimes against it feel personally offensive to a huge audience.

The earliest recorded use of "pizza crimes" as a concept dates to October 17, 2013, when Twitter user @MaggieMcGilly posted about a pizza she'd accidentally burned beyond recognition. The tweet itself was unremarkable at the time, picking up only six likes. But it caught the attention of BuzzFeed writer Katie Notopoulos, who included it in a listicle titled "30 Crimes Against Pizza Committed By Drunk People". That article compiled tweets from people documenting their drunk pizza disasters: cooking a pizza at 20 degrees for 350 minutes, placing one in the oven upside down, eating the paper plate instead of the pizza, and one person who folded a slice of shrimp pizza and stuffed it in her purse.

The BuzzFeed piece gave the @MaggieMcGilly tweet wider exposure and established "pizza crime" as a recognizable category of internet content. Before this, people posted photos of pizza gone wrong without a unifying label. The article provided that label.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (earliest usage), BuzzFeed (popularization), Reddit (community hub)
Key People
@MaggieMcGilly, Katie Notopoulos
Date
2013

The earliest recorded use of "pizza crimes" as a concept dates to October 17, 2013, when Twitter user @MaggieMcGilly posted about a pizza she'd accidentally burned beyond recognition. The tweet itself was unremarkable at the time, picking up only six likes. But it caught the attention of BuzzFeed writer Katie Notopoulos, who included it in a listicle titled "30 Crimes Against Pizza Committed By Drunk People". That article compiled tweets from people documenting their drunk pizza disasters: cooking a pizza at 20 degrees for 350 minutes, placing one in the oven upside down, eating the paper plate instead of the pizza, and one person who folded a slice of shrimp pizza and stuffed it in her purse.

The BuzzFeed piece gave the @MaggieMcGilly tweet wider exposure and established "pizza crime" as a recognizable category of internet content. Before this, people posted photos of pizza gone wrong without a unifying label. The article provided that label.

How It Spread

After the BuzzFeed article established the terminology, pizza crime content spread steadily across Twitter and Reddit through the mid-to-late 2010s. Users began tagging their own pizza disasters and discoveries with variations of "pizza crime" and "crimes against pizza."

The dedicated subreddit r/PizzaCrimes launched on December 29, 2019. By June 2021, it had attracted over 65,000 subscribers. Growth accelerated from there. The subreddit's most upvoted post of a genuine pizza crime during that early period was titled "R(post)eddit," uploaded by u/SpyCGL, showing a Twitter image of a pizza with an absurd amount of extra crust. It pulled in over 6,700 upvotes and 68 comments within three months.

The community grew to over 222,000 "jury members" as documented by Bored Panda, which ran a feature highlighting 50 of the subreddit's worst offenses. The article noted common crime categories that had emerged on the subreddit: Malformed, Cursed, Fruit, Dropped, Mistreated, Meme, Identity Theft, and Satire.

One post that picked up traction was u/LouisPei's submission of a "midwest sushi" pizza created by LoPiez Pizza, a roll-style creation that blurred the line between pizza and something else entirely.

Pizza crimes also spread through broader food-shaming communities on Reddit. In 2022, a post on r/shittyfoodporn went viral when u/ImMelissaning shared a photo of Altoona-style pizza from a restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The image showed six slices featuring thick dough, marinara, salami, bell peppers, and American cheese cut into squares. It racked up 17,000 upvotes and 1,300 comments, with one Pennsylvania resident writing: "As a representative of the PA gang, [I'd] like to apologize for whatever the f*ck this is and assure you that Altoona does not represent the rest of the state". Another commenter noted that the Altoona Hotel, where the style originated, had burned down years earlier, prompting the reply: "Yet, somehow, the fire failed to kill this monstrosity".

How to Use This Meme

Pizza crimes follow a simple format. Users typically:

1

Encounter or create a pizza that violates common pizza conventions

2

Photograph the evidence

3

Post it to r/PizzaCrimes, Twitter, or another platform with language framing the pizza as a criminal offense

Cultural Impact

Pizza crimes tapped into a broader internet fascination with food shaming and the debate over acceptable pizza toppings. The Hawaiian pizza debate, which predates the pizza crimes community by decades, gave the concept built-in cultural energy. Sam Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant in Ontario, first combined ham and pineapple on pizza in the 1960s, inspired by American-Chinese sweet-and-salty flavor pairings. The controversy around that single topping choice has fueled decades of food discourse, with the president of Iceland even declaring in 2017 that he'd ban it if he could.

The pizza crimes community positioned itself as going beyond the pineapple debate. As Bored Panda put it: "If you think pineapple on pizza is controversial, you haven't seen anything yet". Swedish pizza restaurants serving banana and curry pizza, pizzas topped with whole chickens, and creations featuring french fries and kiwi all made the list of offenses.

Media outlets including Newsweek picked up individual pizza crime stories, with the Altoona-style pizza post generating its own article exploring the history of the regional style. The newspaper traced Altoona-style pizza back to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette clipping from October 13, 1996, which identified the Altoona Hotel as the first location to serve the dish.

Fun Facts

The r/PizzaCrimes subreddit categorizes offenses into formal charge types including "Malformed," "Cursed," "Fruit," "Dropped," "Mistreated," and "Identity Theft".

One of the earliest documented pizza crimes involved someone so drunk they tried to warm their pizza in the fridge and stood waiting for it to beep.

A drunk duo denied service at a Eugene, Oregon pizza place reportedly used moonshine to light it on fire.

Tom Hanks was once photographed photobombing a drunk person at a pizza restaurant, and the image circulated as a wholesome pizza crime adjacent moment.

Experimental psychologist Charles Spence at the University of Oxford has studied why sweet toppings on pizza work for some people, noting that "sweet is the most-liked taste, so it is an easy win".

Derivatives & Variations

Altoona-style pizza discourse:

A specific subset of pizza crime content focused on this Pennsylvania regional style featuring American cheese on thick dough, which went viral after a Reddit post in 2022[3].

Drunk pizza crimes:

The original sub-genre documented by BuzzFeed, focused specifically on pizza disasters caused by intoxication, including cooking at wrong temperatures, eating plates, and storing pizza in purses[1].

Midwest sushi pizza:

A roll-style pizza creation by LoPiez Pizza that was posted to r/PizzaCrimes and sparked debate about where pizza ends and another food begins[4].

Frequently Asked Questions