There Is a Pipe Bomb in Your Mailbox

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About

There Is a Pipe Bomb in Your Mailbox refers to a series of GIF caption and image caption memes featuring the catchphrase, used as reactions on Discord and other messaging apps and social media. Referencing Ted Kaczynski's bombing campaign as the infamous Unabomber, the format was popularized on Discord in 2021, leading to a variety of memes about planting pipe bombs in 2021 and 2022.

Origin

Prior to June 24th, 2020, an unknown user posted a GIF caption in which a GIF of KEEMSTAR doing backflips (backflips performed by a stuntman) was combined with the caption "There is a pipe bomb in your mailbox" (shown below). While the original upload of the meme could not be discovered, the earliest found reuploads were made by YouTuber^[1] Holoslaw on June 24th, 2020, and Twitter^[2] user @AutumnFox___ on July 29th, 2020. On September 21st, 2020, Tenor^[3] user goobydotwav reuploaded the GIF.

Precursors

Prior to the popularization of the KEEMSTAR GIF caption, earlier memes about planting pipe bombs in mailboxes, which generally reference Ted Kaczynski's bombing campaign, were posted on various social media platforms. For example, on June 8th, 2016, an unknown Redditor posted a Bertstrips meme that gained over 220 upvotes in the /r/bertstrips^[4] subreddit in six months (shown below).

Bert just realized he put the pipe bomb in the wrong person's mailbox.

Spread

In 2020 and 2021, the KEEMSTAR GIF caption was used as a reaction and shitpost by Discord users. Starting in early 2021, other GIF caption memes featuring the same caption were posted on Tenor, signaling initial popularization of the format on Discord. For example, on February 26th, 2021, Tenor^[5] user DatSquishyFello posted a Your Favorite Martian GIF captioned with the phrase (shown below, left). In April 2021, an image of Private from Madagascar captioned with the phrase achieved viral spread^[6]^[7] (shown below, right).

you FOUND A NOTES There is a pipe bomb in your mailbox Continue

In summer 2021, multiple "There is a pipe bomb in your mailbox" GIF captions were uploaded by users on Tenor^[8]^[9]^[10] for further use on Discord.

On August 26th, 2021, Twitter^[11] user @PonehAnon posted a Neco-Arc fan art in which Neco-Arc plants a pipe bomb in a mailbox, with the bomb going off and sending Neco-Arc flying. The post gained over 2,500 retweets and 11,400 likes in seven months (shown below).

Viral spread of the meme in the following months, including dubbed versions of the meme, resulted into mild association of Neco-Arc and Pipe Bomb memes.