Why #TheCumPipe is hot on Twitter

If you signed up for Twitter this Monday, you may have been confused when you saw the words “The Cum Pipe” on the sidebar of the social media site. Don’t you know what this arrangement of words means? Good news: I found out and can explain it to you.

It all started this morning when a meme page called Everything Out of Context came out tweeted a joke

Memes with Peach, Luigi and Mario on three chain pipes, each with a different color scheme: gold, white and rainbow. The text on the picture reads: “It’s time you decided on the gay pipe, the piss pipe or the sperm pipe.” Most of the reposts of the Super Mario 3D world meme only has a static image of it, but the original contains a video in which a Luigi-like voice asks you for those fateful words.

While this poster didn’t create the original meme that has been circulating the internet for a while, this particular account saw it before many eyeballs this March. Puyi, the user behind the post, told Polygon that he found this 3D world meme and thought it would be “fun” to promote the post and allow people to “choose one of the three options”. That is, someone paid for you to read the words “sperm pipe”.

It is noteworthy that the Cum Pipe tweet was not a simple poll. If you choose an option instead, a tweet will automatically be filled out explaining your choice. For example, selecting the yellow pipe would end up with a tweet that read, “I’ll choose #ThePissPipe” – when in fact you’d still have to send it. The tweet promoted on Monday resulted in over 6,300 tweets with the hashtag #TheCumPipe, meaning people preferred the clear warp pipe of all three options very much.

You may recognize this pattern from a previous, similarly spontaneous trend: the carp picture. Back in December, a student used the same Twitter feature to get a photo of a carp that was browsing the Internet for a bright, if brief, moment. This is exactly the same, except a lot less healthy. (Twitter users far and wide weren’t happy that #TheCumPipe was trending today.)

Once the meme gained enough visibility, the voting itself encouraged people to compete with one another. But the more people fought for the best pipe, the more everyone else saw the meme over and over again.

When asked if he would ever consider a career in marketing, Puyi said, “After today, my interest in marketing has increased, but I can’t say for sure if I want to go that route.”