The Object To Your Left — Blog post featuring the meme with a user responding 'A speaker. I'm screwed.'

The Object To Your Left

2009forum gameclassic

Published November 14, 2026

The Object To Your Left is a forum game asking participants to identify whatever sits closest to their left hand as their weapon for a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. The zombie version began circulating in August 2010 after a hand-pointing image appeared on the blog Design Crush, then jumped to MyConfinedSpace, Geekologie and over a dozen niche forums within weeks. By March 2012, F7U12 rage comics about grabbing televisions or cell phones earned thousands of upvotes on Reddit and locked the format into early meme history.

forum era memes thought experiment memes participatory prompt memes late 2000s memes rage comics

Overview

Participants answer honestly, naming whatever household item happens to sit nearest their left hand, usually a lamp, a coffee mug, a TV remote or a pet toy1. The comedy depends on the gap between the mundane object and the imagined zombie horde, with posters either admitting defeat or inventing elaborate tactics for killing the undead with a stapler or a USB cable3.

The prompt travels well because it needs no template beyond a single sentence, though it is often paired with a shareable image of a hand pointing left at empty space1. A right-pointing counterpart appeared in October 2010 for users uncomfortable with the left-hand version6, and rage comic artists later adapted the setup into four-panel strips showing panicked reactions to useless weapons4. On Tumblr, roleplay-bloggers writing survivalist scenarios adopted the question as a worldbuilding exercise6.

Origin & Background

Platform
Yahoo! Answers / Design Crush (viral spread)
Date
2009

Early "object to your left" threads surfaced on Yahoo! Answers as early as May 18, 2009, when a user named Mayhem asked respondents to fill a blank in the quote "The people have a right to the truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of ______" using whatever item sat near their left hand2. The variant tying the object to a zombie apocalypse weapon came later and traveled with an image showing a disembodied hand pointing left.

One of the earliest copies of that image was posted to the design and lifestyle blog Design Crush on August 9, 2010, under a post titled "Monday Goodness: Zombie Apocolypse"1. The blog entry framed the question as a lighthearted survival test for readers in the comments, and the finger-pointing graphic became the version that circulated on humor aggregators over the following month6.

How It Spread

On September 7, 2010, the Design Crush image was reposted on the humor site MyConfinedSpace3, and within five days both Geekologie4 and Geek.com had run their own copies of the prompt. That same month, players started threads on the California firearms board Calgun, the computer enthusiast community AnandTech, the Dofus MMORPG forum, Reddit and the BodyBuilding.com forums6. The question also turned up on the Social Anxiety Support forum, MMO Champion and the humor site Sodahead, and gained a lasting audience on Tumblr among roleplay-bloggers writing zombie survival fiction6.

In October 2010, a mirrored image with a red arrow pointing right appeared on FunnyJunk, asking users to use the object on their right instead6. The right-handed version spread to Newgrounds, BasilMarket, Sodahead and Gaia Online, and generated more than 20 duplicate questions on Yahoo! Answers6.

Rage comic artists picked up the format next. The first known rage comic about the game was posted on FunnyJunk in November 2010, showing the character finding a cell phone and using it to call a weapons dealer from Grand Theft Auto5. On March 16, 2012, a Reddit rage comic about grabbing a television instead of a real weapon earned 3,610 upvotes on the r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu subreddit7, and over 20 more rage comics on the same prompt followed in the weeks after.

Timeline

2009-05-18

Yahoo! Answers user Mayhem posts an early 'object to your left' question asking respondents to fill in a famous quote with the item near their left hand.

2010-08-09

The blog Design Crush publishes the zombie apocalypse version with the hand-pointing image.

2010-09-07

MyConfinedSpace reposts the image, followed within five days by Geekologie and Geek.com.

2010-10

A mirrored 'object to your right' version appears on FunnyJunk and spreads to Newgrounds, BasilMarket and Gaia Online.

2010-11

FunnyJunk hosts the first rage comic about the game, featuring a cell phone and a Grand Theft Auto weapons dealer.

2012-03-16

A Reddit rage comic on r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu about grabbing a television earns 3,610 upvotes and kicks off a run of copycat strips.

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