This Would Have Been A Photo Of A X

About

This Would Have Been A Photo Of A X is a phrasal template and exploitable meme that was taken from an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) post on X in late October 2023. The post, which originally included a picture with red-and-white text on a black background describing a horrific image and a statement that the original image itself can't be posted because of the site's guidelines, began to be parodied into memes by having the words changed around while keeping a similar aesthetic. The original post also began to experience backlash as another facet of the ongoing Israel-Hamas Conflict.

Origin

On October 23rd, 2023, as part of ongoing reporting on the conflict between Hamas and Israel, the IDF^[1] posted the following text as an image to its X / Twitter account (shown below):

"THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A PHOTO OF A LIFELESS PREGNANT WOMAN NEXT TO HER BEHEADED UNBORN BABY CUT OUT OF HER BELLY BY HAMAS TERRORISTS. DUE TO THIS PLATFORM'S GUIDELINES, WE CAN'T SHOW YOU THAT."

This image was posted after weeks of numerous social media users remaining skeptical over some of the stories coming out of the region, such as reports of Hamas beheading 40 babies on the day of the attack.

Immediately upon being posted, the image and the words began to be attacked by Pro-Palestinian users. On October 23rd, 2023, X user @ronatun^[2] uploaded a quote retweet reply to the image with his own phrase, claiming that he is trying to post a picture of his grandmother as a bicycle if she had wheels, showing his doubt that the claim is true (shown below).

Spread

Skepticism about the post in general led to an increase in memes being made about it as it spread online. For example, on October 23rd, 2023, X users @SteakFrankHouse^[3] and @itsamineazizi^[4] both uploaded two similar examples of the phrase being edited into a meme. While both images use the original phrase but change the final wording to explicitly say that the image the Israel Defense Forces is referring to is fake. @SteakFrankHouse's usage (shown below, left) merely states that the image does not exist, while @itsamine directly calls out the IDF for purportedly lying (shown below, right).

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The phrase continued to evolve as a meme template over the following days, with social media users using it completely separated from its initial context. For example, on October 23rd, 2023, X user @GothicGrover^[5] used the phrasal template to string together several recent Zoomer buzzwords, such as Big Chungus, rizz, Skibidi Toilet, L Rizz Baby Gronk and gyatt, among others (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References