My Fellow Liberal?

About

My Fellow Liberal? refers to a cartoon that illustrates a perceived shift in the Overton window between 2008 and 2021 towards the left. After April 2022 when entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk reposted the comic, it became a subject of edits and parodies as an exploitable meme online, primarily on Twitter.

Origin

On August 6th, 2021, Twitter^[1] user @SwipeWritght tweeted a political cartoon illustrating a perceived shift in the Overton window between 2008 and 2021 towards the left, with the character in the comic, who is a left-leaning individual in 2008, finding themselves in the right-wing in 2021 despite not having changed their views. The post received over 2,600 retweets and 15,600 likes in nine months (shown below).

Spread

The author retweeted^[2][3] the comic on November 20th, 2021, and on April 19th, 2022, with the posts gaining over 1,300 retweets and 6,600 likes and 1,100 retweets and 8,000 likes, respectively.

On April 19th, 2022, Twitter^[4] user @timbahontoast made the earliest found edit of the comic, in which the character gave a handjob to the conservative (censored version shown below). The edit received over 170 likes in two weeks.

On April 28th, 2022, entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk reposted^[5] the cartoon, with the post gaining over 218,500 retweets and 1.5 million likes in five days.

The post inspired an influx of edits and parodies of the cartoon in the following days. For example, on April 28th, 2022, Twitter^[6] user @Pappiness posted an edit that received over 570 retweets and 3,000 likes on Twitter in five days (shown below, left). On April 29th, Twitter^[7] user @omnicomfy posted an edit that received over 900 retweets and 6,500 likes in four days (shown below, right).

On April 28th, 2022, @SwipeWright minted^[8] an NFT for the cartoon, offering it for sale.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References