16 Relatable Domino Effect Memes Showing Exactly Where It All Went Wrong
Meme Profile
- Meme Name: Domino Effect
- Alternative Names: Slippery Slope, Giant Dominoes, Small To Big Dominoes
- Source: Stephen Morris: Giant Dominoes (YouTube)
- Media Type: Image Macro / Object Labeling
- Year: 2016 (Source), 2019 (Meme Popularity)
- Vibe: Escalation, Causality, Unintended Consequences, How things spiraled out of control
Description & Origin
Description
The template comes from a 2016 physics demonstration by Stephen Morris at the University of Toronto. He was showing how a tiny domino (5mm) can eventually knock over a massive 30kg block because each tile is 1.5x larger than the previous one.
Origin
The original footage originates from a 2016 YouTube video titled "Giant Dominoes" by Stephen Morris, demonstrating the physics of amplification. The image transitioned into a meme format around early 2019.
- Source Credit: [Data Missing] regarding the first specific person to crop the still frame for object labeling.
- Initial Spread: In March 2019, a variant involving "reading a Wikipedia page" appeared on Reddit's r/me_irl, gaining over 66,000 points.
- Viral Peak: The template saw heavy usage on Twitter and Reddit throughout 2020 as a way to map out convoluted personal histories or internet "rabbit holes."
The Gallery Analysis
The following examples represent specific community-driven variations of the template and do not encompass the entirety of its usage.
- Career Trajectory: Satirizes the causal link between early childhood hobbies and professional burnout. It suggests that playing a PC game at age 3 is the "gateway drug" to a lifelong career in IT support.
- Linguistic Rabbit Hole: Taps into the "Wikipedia trap" trope. It parodies how a mundane work-related search can result in a two-hour deep dive into the Great Vowel Shift (the systematic change in English pronunciation between 1400–1700).
- Minecraft Progression: Summarizes the gameplay loop of Minecraft. It mocks the absurdity of starting the game by "punching trees" with bare hands and ending it by "fighting a dragon in another dimension" (The Ender Dragon).
