This Kills The Crab

2010Image macroclassic

Also known as: Sad Crab · Okay Crab · Optimistic Crab

This Kills The Crab is a 2010 image-macro meme pairing a soft-shell crab with kitchen shears with clinical, deadpan captions about obvious dark outcomes.

"This Kills The Crab" is an image macro meme built around a photograph of a soft-shell crab about to be cut with kitchen shears, paired with deadpan captions about the crab's impending death. First scanned from a cooking magazine and posted online in March 2010, the image became a template for dark, clinical humor about obvious or inevitable outcomes. The meme's staying power comes from its flat, instructional tone applied to absurd or grim situations.

dark humor memescaptioned animal memesimage macro memesearly 2010s memes

Overview

The core image shows a soft-shell crab held in place while a pair of kitchen shears are positioned at its face, ready to cut. The original recipe instruction accompanying the photo read something along the lines of "Relieve the crab of its face. This kills the crab"2. That clinical, matter-of-fact phrasing turned a mundane cooking step into unintentional dark comedy.

The meme takes two main forms. In one version, captions are written from the crab's perspective, showing it trying to stay positive or accept its fate ("I had a good life" or variations on forced optimism)3. In the other, the caption simply states the obvious consequence of what's happening in the image, mirroring the original recipe's deadpan delivery2.

The photograph appeared in a cooking magazine's March 2010 recipe for preparing live soft-shell crab. Know Your Meme identifies the source as the March 2010 issue of *Fine Cooking*3, while the person who first scanned and posted the image online claims it came from *Gourmet Magazine*, received through a gift subscription from their mother1.

On March 11, 2010, a user on POE News (an offshoot of the Portal of Evil community) posted a scan of the image under the title "sad crab." The scan was hosted at beesbuzz.biz/crap/sadcrab.jpg1. It picked up traction as a minor meme within the POE News community and was hotlinked to other sites, including the Spaceghetto image board1.

Origin & Background

Platform
POE News forums (original scan), Tumblr / Reddit / 4chan (viral spread)
Key People
beesbuzz.biz blogger, Fine Cooking / Gourmet Magazine
Date
2010

The photograph appeared in a cooking magazine's March 2010 recipe for preparing live soft-shell crab. Know Your Meme identifies the source as the March 2010 issue of *Fine Cooking*, while the person who first scanned and posted the image online claims it came from *Gourmet Magazine*, received through a gift subscription from their mother.

On March 11, 2010, a user on POE News (an offshoot of the Portal of Evil community) posted a scan of the image under the title "sad crab." The scan was hosted at beesbuzz.biz/crap/sadcrab.jpg. It picked up traction as a minor meme within the POE News community and was hotlinked to other sites, including the Spaceghetto image board.

How It Spread

Five days after the POE News post, the image was reblogged by the Tumblr blog "Certified Bullshit Technician" and the humor blog Woosk on March 16th, 2010. From there it circulated quietly until later that year, when it resurfaced on FunnyJunk and Reddit between November 13th and 14th. The Reddit thread alone pulled in over 400 comments.

The real explosion came in early April 2011, when the image appeared on 4chan's cooking board /ck/. That single thread drew over 200 comments and produced 68 image derivatives. From /ck/ it jumped to Bodybuilding Forums, FunnyJunk again, Reddit, and Meme Generator. The phrase "This kills the crab" became shorthand on Reddit and 4chan for pointing out any situation with an obvious, fatal, or catastrophic outcome.

The meme's deadpan phrasing also spawned the popular derivative "This kills the man," applied to photos of people in clearly dangerous situations. The format stripped away emotional language entirely, describing disaster with the clinical detachment of a cookbook instruction. That flat tone made it adaptable to nearly any context where something bad was about to happen.

Interestingly, the original scanner had no idea their forum post had become a meme until years later. They discovered its spread by accident during a reminiscing thread on a forum populated by Portal of Evil veterans. Someone unfamiliar with POE's history recognized the image and mentioned it was a well-known meme. Even the source magazine noticed the viral spread and attempted to capitalize on it, though attribution rarely traced back to the POE News origin.

How to Use This Meme

The "This Kills The Crab" format typically works in two ways:

1

The deadpan statement: Find or create an image where something is about to go very wrong. Add a flat, clinical caption like "This kills the [subject]." The humor comes from understating an obviously terrible outcome.

2

The optimistic crab perspective: Take the original crab image (or a similar one) and add first-person captions from the crab's point of view, usually expressing forced positivity, denial, or resigned acceptance about its situation. Common captions include variations on "It's fine," "I had a good run," or other gallows humor.

Cultural Impact

"This Kills The Crab" helped establish a specific comedy register online: the clinical observation format, where horrifying or absurd situations are described in the most emotionally flat language possible. This register showed up later in Dark Souls player messages, nature documentary voice-over memes, and the broader trend of "matter-of-fact" internet humor.

The meme also became an early case study in how difficult it is to trace meme origins accurately. The beesbuzz.biz blogger who posted the original scan noted that "authoritative" internet sources often had incomplete or incorrect histories of the image's spread, with almost no attribution reaching back to the POE News post where it actually started. Nearly every copy of the image circulating online carries the same printing defects and paper wrinkles from that single original scan.

*Gourmet Magazine* (or *Fine Cooking*, depending on the source) eventually noticed the viral attention and tried to leverage it, though the meme had long since escaped any single owner's control.

Fun Facts

The original scanner didn't realize "Sad Crab" had become a widespread meme until several years after posting it. They found out by accident during a nostalgia thread.

Almost every version of the image circulating online traces back to a single scan, identifiable by the same printing defects and paper wrinkles from the original magazine page.

There's a dispute about which magazine the photo came from. The person who scanned it says *Gourmet Magazine*, while Know Your Meme says *Fine Cooking*.

The image was originally hosted in a directory literally called "/crap/" on the scanner's personal website.

Derivatives & Variations

"This kills the man"

The most widespread spinoff, applying the same deadpan format to photos of humans in dangerous situations. Became a common Reddit comment on fail videos[2].

Optimistic/Okay Crab captions

Image macros using the original photo with first-person captions from the crab's perspective, often expressing denial or forced cheerfulness about its impending death[3].

4chan /ck/ edits

The April 2011 thread on 4chan's cooking board produced 68 image derivatives in a single thread, including Photoshop edits and recontextualizations of the original photo[3].

Frequently Asked Questions

This Kills The Crab

2010Image macroclassic

Also known as: Sad Crab · Okay Crab · Optimistic Crab

This Kills The Crab is a 2010 image-macro meme pairing a soft-shell crab with kitchen shears with clinical, deadpan captions about obvious dark outcomes.

"This Kills The Crab" is an image macro meme built around a photograph of a soft-shell crab about to be cut with kitchen shears, paired with deadpan captions about the crab's impending death. First scanned from a cooking magazine and posted online in March 2010, the image became a template for dark, clinical humor about obvious or inevitable outcomes. The meme's staying power comes from its flat, instructional tone applied to absurd or grim situations.

dark humor memes captioned animal memes image macro memes early 2010s memes

Overview

The core image shows a soft-shell crab held in place while a pair of kitchen shears are positioned at its face, ready to cut. The original recipe instruction accompanying the photo read something along the lines of "Relieve the crab of its face. This kills the crab". That clinical, matter-of-fact phrasing turned a mundane cooking step into unintentional dark comedy.

The meme takes two main forms. In one version, captions are written from the crab's perspective, showing it trying to stay positive or accept its fate ("I had a good life" or variations on forced optimism). In the other, the caption simply states the obvious consequence of what's happening in the image, mirroring the original recipe's deadpan delivery.

The photograph appeared in a cooking magazine's March 2010 recipe for preparing live soft-shell crab. Know Your Meme identifies the source as the March 2010 issue of *Fine Cooking*, while the person who first scanned and posted the image online claims it came from *Gourmet Magazine*, received through a gift subscription from their mother.

On March 11, 2010, a user on POE News (an offshoot of the Portal of Evil community) posted a scan of the image under the title "sad crab." The scan was hosted at beesbuzz.biz/crap/sadcrab.jpg. It picked up traction as a minor meme within the POE News community and was hotlinked to other sites, including the Spaceghetto image board.

Origin & Background

Platform
POE News forums (original scan), Tumblr / Reddit / 4chan (viral spread)
Key People
beesbuzz.biz blogger, Fine Cooking / Gourmet Magazine
Date
2010

The photograph appeared in a cooking magazine's March 2010 recipe for preparing live soft-shell crab. Know Your Meme identifies the source as the March 2010 issue of *Fine Cooking*, while the person who first scanned and posted the image online claims it came from *Gourmet Magazine*, received through a gift subscription from their mother.

On March 11, 2010, a user on POE News (an offshoot of the Portal of Evil community) posted a scan of the image under the title "sad crab." The scan was hosted at beesbuzz.biz/crap/sadcrab.jpg. It picked up traction as a minor meme within the POE News community and was hotlinked to other sites, including the Spaceghetto image board.

How It Spread

Five days after the POE News post, the image was reblogged by the Tumblr blog "Certified Bullshit Technician" and the humor blog Woosk on March 16th, 2010. From there it circulated quietly until later that year, when it resurfaced on FunnyJunk and Reddit between November 13th and 14th. The Reddit thread alone pulled in over 400 comments.

The real explosion came in early April 2011, when the image appeared on 4chan's cooking board /ck/. That single thread drew over 200 comments and produced 68 image derivatives. From /ck/ it jumped to Bodybuilding Forums, FunnyJunk again, Reddit, and Meme Generator. The phrase "This kills the crab" became shorthand on Reddit and 4chan for pointing out any situation with an obvious, fatal, or catastrophic outcome.

The meme's deadpan phrasing also spawned the popular derivative "This kills the man," applied to photos of people in clearly dangerous situations. The format stripped away emotional language entirely, describing disaster with the clinical detachment of a cookbook instruction. That flat tone made it adaptable to nearly any context where something bad was about to happen.

Interestingly, the original scanner had no idea their forum post had become a meme until years later. They discovered its spread by accident during a reminiscing thread on a forum populated by Portal of Evil veterans. Someone unfamiliar with POE's history recognized the image and mentioned it was a well-known meme. Even the source magazine noticed the viral spread and attempted to capitalize on it, though attribution rarely traced back to the POE News origin.

How to Use This Meme

The "This Kills The Crab" format typically works in two ways:

1

The deadpan statement: Find or create an image where something is about to go very wrong. Add a flat, clinical caption like "This kills the [subject]." The humor comes from understating an obviously terrible outcome.

2

The optimistic crab perspective: Take the original crab image (or a similar one) and add first-person captions from the crab's point of view, usually expressing forced positivity, denial, or resigned acceptance about its situation. Common captions include variations on "It's fine," "I had a good run," or other gallows humor.

Cultural Impact

"This Kills The Crab" helped establish a specific comedy register online: the clinical observation format, where horrifying or absurd situations are described in the most emotionally flat language possible. This register showed up later in Dark Souls player messages, nature documentary voice-over memes, and the broader trend of "matter-of-fact" internet humor.

The meme also became an early case study in how difficult it is to trace meme origins accurately. The beesbuzz.biz blogger who posted the original scan noted that "authoritative" internet sources often had incomplete or incorrect histories of the image's spread, with almost no attribution reaching back to the POE News post where it actually started. Nearly every copy of the image circulating online carries the same printing defects and paper wrinkles from that single original scan.

*Gourmet Magazine* (or *Fine Cooking*, depending on the source) eventually noticed the viral attention and tried to leverage it, though the meme had long since escaped any single owner's control.

Fun Facts

The original scanner didn't realize "Sad Crab" had become a widespread meme until several years after posting it. They found out by accident during a nostalgia thread.

Almost every version of the image circulating online traces back to a single scan, identifiable by the same printing defects and paper wrinkles from the original magazine page.

There's a dispute about which magazine the photo came from. The person who scanned it says *Gourmet Magazine*, while Know Your Meme says *Fine Cooking*.

The image was originally hosted in a directory literally called "/crap/" on the scanner's personal website.

Derivatives & Variations

"This kills the man"

The most widespread spinoff, applying the same deadpan format to photos of humans in dangerous situations. Became a common Reddit comment on fail videos[2].

Optimistic/Okay Crab captions

Image macros using the original photo with first-person captions from the crab's perspective, often expressing denial or forced cheerfulness about its impending death[3].

4chan /ck/ edits

The April 2011 thread on 4chan's cooking board produced 68 image derivatives in a single thread, including Photoshop edits and recontextualizations of the original photo[3].

Frequently Asked Questions