Skeleton War

About

Skeleton War is an inside joke which originated in 2013 and circulated through Tumblr in October 2014, as a way to tag GIFs or pictures of skeletons used to celebrate the month leading up to Halloween, similar to 2spooky.

Precursor

On July 27th, 2013, Twitter user dril^[5] posted a tweet saying:

"if your grave doesnt say “rest in peace” on it you are automatically drafted into the skeleton war"

The post has since gathered 8,901 retweets and 9,982 favorites.

Origin

On October 1st, 2014 Tumblr blog technicolour-tendencies^[2] posted a picture of Skeletons tagged “Let the Skeleton Wars begin!” Within two weeks the post gained over 800 notes.

Spread

On October 4th, the Tumblr blog theskeletonwar^[3] published a post which explains:

“the skeleton war is slowly becoming a meme and I have to say I am extremely disappointed in all of you. this is incredibly disrespectful to the brave skeletons who are fighting for our lives and freedom
Seriously stop fucking this up”

Within two weeks the post gained over 30,000 notes.

On October 6th, Buzzfeed’s official Tumblr^[4] posted a question they had received from Tumblr user 10scompanion who asked, “what’s your opinion on the Skeleton War,” to which Buzzfeed replied:

“BuzzFeed, for one, welcomes our new skeleton overlords.”

Within a week the post gained over 2,000 notes.

On October 8th, Redditor SbenjiB posted a question to the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[1] subreddit which reads:

“What is this “Skeleton War” going on right now?"

Redditor Hitandrun127 posted a reply on October 10th, explaining:

“This time of year, tumblr has an infatuation with skeletons. You’re probably familiar with the ‘2spooky4me’ meme. That meme originated on tumblr last year 4chan and was adopted by tumblr. This year is the “Skeleton war”.

iFunny user Lord_Skeletor has posted several gifs and photos of skeletons and “recruits members for the skeleton war” under the temporary username Sp00ky_Skeletor