5 Crazy Memes That Went Viral (Centuries And Decades Ago)

Sometimes the knight vs. snail pictures are weirdly unfinished, like they were scribbled in as an afterthought. It's almost as if this bizarre clash between man and mollusk was the first thing every illustrator thought of when they were mindlessly doodling. It was the 13th-century version of dickbutt.

via British Library
"'Tis what m'lady doth professed."

Oddly enough, for an image this popular, there are apparently no written records to explain why knights vs. snails were considered such a hot idea. It's a "great unsolved mystery of medieval manuscripts," like how the ones written on human flesh always bite for your fingers.

The first person who theorized about epic snail-on-knight combat, all the way back in 1850, was the wonderfully named Comte de Bastard, who said it might be a symbol of the Resurrection. But this was based on him seeing only two images, both of which were near illustrations of Lazarus rising from the grave. So he might have been taking wild guesses based on the last thing he saw. A more accepted theory is that the slimy snails might be a symbol for Lombards, a group widely loathed for backstabbing, lending money at interest, and "non-chivalrous comportment in general." But that doesn't explain why the knight often looks shocked or terrified at seeing a gigantic snail monster.

With so little to go on, medieval scholars floated pretty much every possible explanation. For example, that it's a representation of medieval class struggle, or an exaggerated depiction of fighting pesky garden pests. Or maybe it's a dumb joke doodled for fun by bored illustrators and we're supposed to laugh at the knight for cowering before such a "heavily armored" opponent. And naturally, at one point somebody floated the theory that the snail is somehow a symbol of female sexuality -- something also known for being both impenetrable and moist.

"Shitter, Beware" was inscribed on public toilets, private toilets, city streets, and even tombs all over ancient Rome. Sometimes the phrase was expanded to refer to a punishment from the god Jupiter for dropping an ill-placed deuce. Sometimes the phrase was part of a whole fresco depicting the goddess Isis protecting a respectfully pious pooper from the snakelike agathodaemons. A huge, ornate carving in the Roman city of Aquileia depicts Jupiter about to toss a whole handful of lightning bolts to fry some poor sloppy peasant mid-turd. Because when you're going to invest in hundreds of hours of chiseling, you want to make sure your art is about something meaningful, like gods murdering people while they poop.

To read about it, it sounds like the average Roman citizen raced from toilet to toilet with a bursting colon that could never make it, incurring the wrath of their gods with each sudden and unwanted shit. According to historian J.C. McKeown, even gravestones frequently carried the Cacator Cave Malum phrase. That's how big of a hit this poop joke was: People let it mark their loved ones' eternal resting places. Or maybe it wasn't a joke, and instead a friendly reminder not to shit on the dead? The character Trimalchio from the Roman novel Satyricon pledges one of his freedmen to guard his tomb after his death specifically to prevent people from shitting on it. Whether this was a response to a genuine epidemic of vigilante turdvengeance or a sort of irreverent sanitation warning about hovering your wide-open anus over human remains is still being argued by historians. Not acclaimed historians, but still.

Charles Mackay was a 19th-century British journalist whose book Memoirs Of Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness of Crowds is considered an early masterpiece of skepticism and title brevity awareness. One of the less-remembered chapters features Mackay discussing how certain phrases would go viral and sweep through London. Before long, everyone was using them to get laughs, and then they were abandoned in a few weeks. To put it another way, Mackay wrote a book on the "Where's the Beef?"s and "Too Much InforMATION!"s of the 1800s.

The first phrase Mackay could remember was "Quoz!" This was an exclamation used whenever a "vulgar wit wished to mark its incredulity and raise a laugh at the same time." It basically means, "That shit is fucking ridiculous." And for a few months, quoz was everywhere in London, graffitied on walls or toilets and provoking gales of laughter in every pub argument. Then everyone forgot about it and moved on to "What a shocking bad hat!" This became the height of hilarity after a candidate for political office used the phrase while trying to bribe voters with a new hat. Think of it as the "covfefe" of Victorian Southwark, insofar both were really strained jokes certain to annoy and confuse future generations.

After the hat thing came "There he goes with his eye out!" Mackay wrote "many thought it very funny, and the idle amused themselves by chalking it upon walls, or scribbling it upon monuments." He didn't bother explaining what it meant, but with nothing else to go on, it either means "That man's unwelcome gaze is falling on butts" or "That fellow lost a fight to a woodpecker." Probably the first one.

AntonioGuillem/iStock
"Oi, quoz! Get your eye back in, or I'll ruin your hat!"

These sudden bursts of slang were followed in quick succession by "Has your mother sold her mangle?" and "Flare Up!" both of which sound like they're about herpes. These should all come in handy if you're a time traveler wanting to sound hip during very specific weeks in 1800s London, and in absolutely no other situation.

Later Landis movies also contained this same gag tucked away in the literal last minute of every film, and urban legend says that actually asking for Babs at Universal Studios got you a special something. But what? Entrance to a dog fighting arena? Five minutes in a dark closet with the Pink Panther?

Either way, "Ask for Babs" remained a probably nonsense running joke for decades. Some insisted that asking for Babs only led to a discount at Universal, but this became officially against policy in 1989. Ultimately, like everything on this list, it was probably nothing but a thing people said for no reason at all.

There have been a lot of theories about the origin of this symbol, but unfortunately, nothing close to a consensus has been reached. People have attributed it to representing Superman, Suzuki, and the band Styx, but it doesn't completely resemble any of those logos. It's also been associated with graffiti culture, so much so that it was frequently mislabeled as a gang sign.

It was also long thought to be a brand logo of surfer/skate clothing company Stussy, considering they used the image in old edgy Super 8 promos. However when Julian Morgans from Vice checked in with Stussy PR Director Emmy Coates, she clarified that it was not an original Stussy logo, while also admitting she "gets asked that all the time." Presumably alongside whether or not "Stussy" is some sort of sexual portmanteau.

It's also been suggested that part of the appeal of the symbol is its resemblance to a Mobius Strip or an extremely basic Endless Knot, a symbol that showed up in a lot of '60s psychedelic art. Or maybe it's a really simple doodle that's easy to repeat. Maybe humans do weird pointless shit and we're still the same lunatics who spent 200 years drawing snail fights. Cacator Cave Malum, everyone!

Rani Baker made the video game DEATH SWORD, which just won "Most Innovative" at the Intel Buzz Indie Gamedev Showcase. You can support the project here. Jacopo's novels The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy and its sequel License To Quill are pretty awesome, so please buy a copy for everyone you know this Christmas.

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