That Post Gave Me Cancer

2010image macroclassic

That Post Gave Me Cancer is a 4chan image macro featuring characters lying sick in bed, captioned with the phrase to trash a low-quality post. The format took off around 2010 after an anonymous user paired the line with a screencap of Spider-Man on a hospital bed from the 1967 animated series.

4chan memescatchphrase memesreaction memes1967 spider man memessnowclone memes

Overview

That Post Gave Me Cancer is a reply-style image macro that pairs a picture of a sick or bedridden character with the caption "That post gave me cancer." People drop it in comment threads to say the post above them is so bad it made the reader ill1. On 4chan, "cancer" had been slang for garbage content since at least November 2007, tied to the older phrase "The Cancer That Is Killing /b/"1.

The anchor image uses a screencap from "To Cage a Spider," episode 19 of season two of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, often called 60's Spider-Man2. In the shot, Peter Parker is stuck in a hospital bed, which reads cleanly as a reaction to something awful enough to put him there. Later versions swap Spider-Man for any character who looks unwell, and the joke still lands1.

How It Spread

Through the early 2010s, the caption jumped off the Spider-Man screencap and onto other sick-in-bed shots of cartoon characters, real people, and animals1. Every riff keeps the same core beat: the post you replied to was so terrible it hospitalized the character in the picture. Because any picture of someone looking miserable can carry the line, the format was easy to spin up on the fly.

The caption also spawned two snowclones. "That Post Gave Me X" swaps out cancer for any other ailment, and "That Y Gave Me Cancer" blames a different noun for the sickness (a video, a thread, a subreddit)1. Urban Dictionary logged variant definitions in the surrounding cancer-slang cluster over the same stretch5.

The original macro cooled off after the early 2010s, but "that post gave me cancer" is still a stock 4chan reply that shows up without the image attached.

How to Use This Meme

Grab any picture of a character or person looking sick, hospitalized, or bedridden, and add the caption "That post gave me cancer." Post it as a reply to a thread or comment you think is bad. The snowclones "That Post Gave Me [ailment]" and "That [noun] Gave Me Cancer" work the same way, swapping either half of the sentence1.

Frequently Asked Questions

That Post Gave Me Cancer

2010image macroclassic

That Post Gave Me Cancer is a 4chan image macro featuring characters lying sick in bed, captioned with the phrase to trash a low-quality post. The format took off around 2010 after an anonymous user paired the line with a screencap of Spider-Man on a hospital bed from the 1967 animated series.

4chan memes catchphrase memes reaction memes 1967 spider man memes snowclone memes

Overview

That Post Gave Me Cancer is a reply-style image macro that pairs a picture of a sick or bedridden character with the caption "That post gave me cancer." People drop it in comment threads to say the post above them is so bad it made the reader ill1. On 4chan, "cancer" had been slang for garbage content since at least November 2007, tied to the older phrase "The Cancer That Is Killing /b/"1.

The anchor image uses a screencap from "To Cage a Spider," episode 19 of season two of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, often called 60's Spider-Man2. In the shot, Peter Parker is stuck in a hospital bed, which reads cleanly as a reaction to something awful enough to put him there. Later versions swap Spider-Man for any character who looks unwell, and the joke still lands1.

How It Spread

Through the early 2010s, the caption jumped off the Spider-Man screencap and onto other sick-in-bed shots of cartoon characters, real people, and animals1. Every riff keeps the same core beat: the post you replied to was so terrible it hospitalized the character in the picture. Because any picture of someone looking miserable can carry the line, the format was easy to spin up on the fly.

The caption also spawned two snowclones. "That Post Gave Me X" swaps out cancer for any other ailment, and "That Y Gave Me Cancer" blames a different noun for the sickness (a video, a thread, a subreddit)1. Urban Dictionary logged variant definitions in the surrounding cancer-slang cluster over the same stretch5.

The original macro cooled off after the early 2010s, but "that post gave me cancer" is still a stock 4chan reply that shows up without the image attached.

How to Use This Meme

Grab any picture of a character or person looking sick, hospitalized, or bedridden, and add the caption "That post gave me cancer." Post it as a reply to a thread or comment you think is bad. The snowclones "That Post Gave Me [ailment]" and "That [noun] Gave Me Cancer" work the same way, swapping either half of the sentence1.

Frequently Asked Questions