Steel Is Heavier Than Feathers

About

Steel Is Heavier Than Feathers refers to a sketch from Scottish sketch comedy series Limmy's Show, in which the titular character poses the question, "What's heavier? A kilogramme of steel or a kilogramme of feathers?" He then incorrectly answers "That's right, a kilogramme of steel. Because steel is heavier than feathers." Other characters interrupt the scene to tell him he's incorrect and that they weigh the same, causing Limmy to look confused. The clip was widely shared online and has been parodied on YouTube and the shot of Limmy's confused face became a reaction image.

Origin

The clip aired in Series 3, Episode 3 of Limmy's Show, which aired on the BBC on December 2nd, 2012. The clip was posted on November 27th, 2012 to YouTube by John Gillooley (shown below).^[1]

Spread

The clip began seeing spread online in 2015. It was posted to FunnyJunk on May 22nd, 2015, where it gained 2,722 likes.^[2] In the thread for the video, one of the earliest screengrabs of Limmy's face was posted, calling it "The face of a broken man" (shown below).

The video was posted on 9gag on September 7th, 2015 where it gained over 754,000 views.^[3] It was also posted to Reddit that day and gained 218 points.^[4] The image of Limmy's face also became popular on Tumblr, where it was used as a reaction image to certain situations. For example, a post by tonberrycrunch using the image gained over 18,000 notes (shown below, left). A post by yumikuri using the image gained over 173,000 notes (shown below, right).

On YouTube, several parodies and edits of the sketch grew popular. For example, an edit posted by Yin Yarn using JoJo's Bizarre Adventure characters gained over 104,000 views (shown below, left). An edit posted by Fowben which distorted the characters gained 34,000 views (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References