# That Post Gave Me Cancer

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.

## 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 ill[1]. 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-Man[2]. 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 lands[1].

## 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 animals[1]. 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 stretch[5].

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
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 sentence[1].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is That Post Gave Me Cancer?
It is a 4chan image macro featuring a sick or bedridden character with the caption "That post gave me cancer," used to insult a low-quality post[1].

### Where did That Post Gave Me Cancer come from?
An anonymous user on 4chan's /co/ board made the base image using a hospital-bed screencap of Spider-Man from the 1967 episode "To Cage a Spider"[2], with the earliest known reposts landing on JoyReactor in March 2010[3].

### What does That Post Gave Me Cancer mean?
It means the post being replied to is so bad it made the reader sick. "Cancer" has been 4chan slang for garbage content since at least 2007, tied to the phrase "The Cancer That Is Killing /b/"[1].

### How do you use That Post Gave Me Cancer?
Reply to a bad post with an image of a sick character captioned with the phrase, or use the snowclone "That [thing] gave me cancer" without an image[1].

### Is That Post Gave Me Cancer still popular?
The original image macro faded from active use after the early 2010s, though the phrase itself is still a stock 4chan reply[1].

## References
1. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708825/](<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708825/>)
2. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/that-post-gave-me-cancer](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/that-post-gave-me-cancer>)
3. [http://joyreactor.com/post/329076](<http://joyreactor.com/post/329076>)
4. [https://chan4chan.com/](<https://chan4chan.com/>)
5. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=That%20Post%20Gave%20Me%20Cancer](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=That%20Post%20Gave%20Me%20Cancer>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/that-post-gave-me-cancer
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