Bill Cosby’s “Meme Me” Idea Backfires Spectacularly

Bill Cosby Asked the Internet to Make Him Into a Meme. It Did Not Go Well. #CosbyMeme http://t.co/b12Am9wpR7 pic.twitter.com/Cd7ujdgUUr

— BDCwire (@BDCwire) November 11, 2014

It’s easy to imagine what Bill Cosby (or his social media manager) had in mind when they proposed the comedian’s fan base make a meme out of his photo on Twitter.

They probably expected a bunch of good-natured and cute memes with much-loved catchphrases like “Zipzopzubbitibop!”

Sure, the catchphrases are there, but the context they’re in are far from cute. The fans were largely inspired by rape accusations stemming from 20 years ago, which resurfaced recently while NBC was thinking about making a sitcom about Cosby’s life.

Memes such as “My two favorite things – Jello pudding & rape” inspired a debate on rape culture on Twitter and the whole thing ended miles away from what Cosby and his team had planned.

After this massive backlash of “rapist Cosby” memes, the comedian deleted the initial tweet and left no further comment on the matter. Not only that, for some time after the tweet, the search function for the words “rape” or “sex” on Twitter cleared out and showed no results.