About

The Industrial Revolution and Its Consequences is a catchphrase and copypasta that originally comes from the Unabomber Manifesto created by Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, also known as The Unabomber. The phrase is typically used online in many schizoposts and Anarcho-Primitivism memes as a way of critiquing modern society.

Origin

As early as 2020, the first line of The Unabomber's manifesto, "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race," became a prominent reference to make whenever there was something topical happening that could be linked back to an industrial society, with a point of the meme being used to show disdain for industrial societies.

On June 27th, 2020, one of the first-known memes to directly use the catchphrase was uploaded to Reddit^[1] by a now-deleted user, with the text being used with a reaction of a female getting a large grin on her face at the topic being brought up, earning over 500 upvotes in three years (shown below).

Spread

The catchphrase and reference began to spread online in the following months and years, gaining notoriety as a catch-all for anti-modern society posts. For example, this can be seen with it being retold through the lens of a monke meme on the August 27th, 2020, in a post by Redditor^[2] u/natpri00 in which the phrase is restated with more intellectual wording, being said by a monkey wearing glasses (shown below).

On October 31st, 2020, Redditor Battle_Toaster35^[3] uploaded a meme comparing other girls on Halloween to themselves, with the scene of other girls being Regina from Mean Girls and the image of the OP being of Ted Kaczynski, followed by the copypasta being captioned underneath the picture in a Robert Downey Jr. Comments image macro. The post earned over 11,000 upvotes in two years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References