# Urinal Etiquette Urinal Etiquette is a four-pane comic from 2010 that shows a man picking the urinal right next to a stranger when the whole row is empty. The anonymous image spent years bouncing around humor sites before Shaq posted it to Facebook in 2013, and later became a popular exploitable on Tumblr with the second character captioned to say absurd things. ## Origin The original author of the comic is unknown. The earliest documented posting is from March 2, 2010 on the Brazilian humor site Capinaremos, under a post titled 'Isso é antiético' ('This is unethical,' translated from Portuguese)[1]. From there the image spread across non-English humor blogs through 2010 to 2013 before crossing into bigger English-speaking communities[6]. The four panels follow a strict format: first panel, empty men's room with one guy at a urinal; second panel, a stranger enters; third panel, the stranger walks past every empty urinal; fourth panel, he settles in right next to the first man[6]. That rigid structure is what later made it easy to re-caption on Tumblr without redrawing anything. - **Platform:** Capinaremos (Brazil) / Tumblr (viral spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2010 ## Overview Urinal Etiquette is a four-panel comic built around a single awkward beat: one man uses a urinal in an otherwise empty men's room, a second man walks in, surveys the long row of free urinals, and then plants himself at the urinal directly next to the first guy[1]. The gag works because it violates the unwritten rule that strangers maximize distance at urinals, a convention catalogued in Urban Dictionary entries like 'use the farthest urinal from someone else that you possibly can'[2]. The comic became an exploitable because the second man's intrusion is a blank slot you can fill with any socially awkward confession. The most-copied template has him turn and announce something, with Tumblr editors swapping in lines like declaring his veganism or revealing some other overshare[3]. The humor hangs on the mismatch between the private, no-talking norm of the men's room and the inappropriate oversharing coming from someone standing one urinal over. It sits inside a longer internet conversation about bathroom protocol that also includes xkcd creator Randall Munroe's 2009 blog post 'Urinal Protocol Vulnerability,' which analyzed the seating problem mathematically[4], and Kurt Nellis's 2006 PSA-style YouTube animation about urinal rules[5]. ## How It Spread After its 2010 Capinaremos appearance[1], the image passed through dozens of humor sites in multiple languages over the next three years. The big English-language break came on January 2, 2013, when Shaquille O'Neal posted the comic to his Facebook page with the caption 'This is an automatic fight in my book…….LMFAO,' a post that drew heavy coverage after commenters piled in with homophobic replies[7]. Jezebel wrote up the Facebook post and the response the next day[8]. On May 13, 2013, the comic was reposted to FunnyJunk under the title 'Maximum Overtroll,' which helped push it further into English meme circles[9]. The exploitable phase kicked off on October 6, 2015, when Tumblr user pi4nobl4ck posted an edited version in which the second man announces that he is vegan. That edit picked up more than 39,000 notes within two weeks[3]. On October 15, 2015, the Tumblr meme research blog Meme Documentation flagged the format, and more re-captioned and photoshopped variants appeared through the rest of that month[6]. ## How to Use The common convention is to leave the first three panels untouched and change only the final panel, usually by adding a speech bubble to the intruder. The joke typically works best when the line is something that would be weird to say to anyone, let alone a stranger mid-pee, like a political declaration, a dietary preference, or an unprompted personal confession[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Urinal Etiquette? It is a four-panel comic in which a man walks into an empty men's room and chooses the urinal directly next to the only other occupant, a setup used as an exploitable for awkward punchlines[6]. ### Where did Urinal Etiquette come from? The earliest known posting is from March 2, 2010 on the Brazilian humor site Capinaremos; the original artist is unknown[1]. ### What does Urinal Etiquette mean? It plays on the unwritten rule that men stand as far apart as possible at urinals, a norm spelled out in sources like Urban Dictionary[2]. ### How do you use Urinal Etiquette? People typically leave the first three panels alone and add a speech bubble to the intruder in the last panel, like pi4nobl4ck's 2015 edit where he announces he is vegan[3]. ### Is Urinal Etiquette still popular? It is a classic exploitable rather than a current trend; its biggest spikes were Shaq's 2013 Facebook post[7] and the 2015 Tumblr remix wave[6]. ## References 1. [http://capinaremos.com/2010/03/02/isso-e-antietico/#comment-59095]() 2. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Urinal%20Etiquette]() 3. [http://pi4nobl4ck.tumblr.com/post/130716451162]() 4. [https://blog.xkcd.com/2009/09/02/urinal-protocol-vulnerability/]() 5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKnWd3JVnfE]() 6. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/urinal-etiquette]() 7. [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/shaquille-oneal-peeing-anti-gay-facebook-post-bathroom-etiquette_n_2402863.html]() 8. [https://jezebel.com/5973321/shaq-posts-his-feelings-on-urinal-etiquette-homophobic-trolls-go-nuts]() 9. [https://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/4586738/Maximum+over+troll]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/urinal-etiquette Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library