Everyone Loses Their Minds

About

“Everyone Loses Their Minds” (sometimes known as “Joker Mind Loss”) is an image macro series based on a screen capture of the villain Joker (played by Heath Ledger) from the 2008 superhero film The Dark Knight. The captions typically juxtapose two thematically related events or actions that lead to drastically different public reactions.

Origin

In a scene in The Dark Knight, the Joker disguises himself as a nurse to meet with the character Two-Face while he is in the hospital. Upon visiting him, the Joker mocks how differently the citizens of Gotham react to his threats of violence depending on who the targeted victim is (shown below).

“If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all ‘part of the plan’. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”

On April 14th, 2012, a Quickmeme^[1] page titled “Joker Mind Loss” was launched, featuring a screen captured image from the scene accompanied by various captions ending with the phrase “everyone loses their minds!”

Spread

On February 26th, 2013, Redditor Damien submitted an image macro to the /r/Advice Animals^[2] subreddit, which mocked the European horse meat scandal (shown below, left). Within three months, the post gained more than 4,800 up votes and 95 comments. On March 28th, Redditor n2bass submitted an image macro suggesting that Reddit swap the regular front page with the new submissions page for April Fools Day to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[5] subreddit (shown below, right), which received over 9,500 up votes and 110 comments in the next two months.

On May 8th, Redditor clever_belle submitted an image macro commentary on how women are treated on Reddit to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[4] subreddit (shown below, left), garnering upwards of 5,600 up votes and 530 comments within one week. On May 10th, Redditor davidsjo complained about the American public’s reaction to high-speed rail transportation using a Joker Mind Loss image macro on /r/AdviceAnimals^[3] (shown below, right). In the first 72 hours, the post accumulated over 9,500 up votes and 110 comments.