Leopards ate my face
About
"Leopards ate my face" is a reference to a phenomenon in which someone supports a policy action which they did not expect to affect them, even though the policy clearly would do so if applied consistently. This happens when believers in personal exceptionalism ("that would never be used against me!") or suffering from privilege blindness ("this policy will be enforced fairly because it has never been enforced unfairly against me or anyone I know", because the speaker and their acquaintances have privilege which they don't realize they have) being surprised by actually having to deal with the consequences of their own actions.
It appears to have originated with a 2016-10-16 tweet by author Adrian Bott: «'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.»
Related
- Leopards ate my face is like a more personalized form of who could have foreseen.
Links
Reference
- Know Your Meme: Leopards Eating People's Faces Party
- Urban Dictionary: Leopards Ate My Face
Groups
Posts
- 2020-11-25 Georgia secretary of state: My family voted for Trump. He threw us under the bus anyway.
- 2020-11-25 John Scalzi on Twitter «"Not only did I support the leopards-eating-faces party, I, a leopard, ate many faces of my own, but then the King of the Leopards ate MY face, and now I am very salty about it"»
- 2020-05-08 "Leopards ate my face" subreddit bans posts about coronavirus scoffers who later die of it «There are simply too many, and it's getting depressing.» (see COVID-19/schadenfreude)