The Masculine Urge To Slowly Bleed Out Here is a catchphrase meme that started with a photo of a snowy bench and spread to other settings. The joke on the serene setting at a waterside park at night references a moment from Blade Runner 2049 and is part of a larger genre of memes that begin with the phrase “the masculine urge to…”
As the gag spread on Twitter, people began to select alternate settings for their somehow both violent and peaceful demise. These became stranger as time went on.
Meme basics:
- Meme Creator: @deltaIV9250
- Meme Type: Catchphrase
- First Appearance: Oct. 5, 2024
- Origin Source: Twitter
- Used to Convey: The desire for a dramatic yet peaceful death
- Peak Popularity: Nov. 2024
Why do men have The Masculine Urge To Slowly Bleed Out Here?
The original photo that started the meme shows a nighttime scene at a city embankment and walkway, everything covered in a thin layer of untouched snow. Streetlights and benches face the water at regular intervals in front of a line of young trees supported by stands.
Based on many responses to the tweet that began the meme, it’s safe to say that the catchphrase was inspired by a scene in the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049. At the end of the film (spoiler alert), the replicant K dies on a flight of steps in the snow after being mortally wounded in a fight.
The scene is peaceful and bittersweet, and similar to many such moments in popular media in which male characters die alone of their wounds, but appear serene or accepting due to knowing that they saved the day or did the best they could. The “urge” to die like this reflects a desire to feel like a hero and go out thinking that you changed things for the better.
Meme origins and masculine urges
Twitter user @ancilladominii posted the city photo to their account on Oct. 3, 2024. Two days later, user @deltaIV9250 quote tweeted this post with the comment, “The masculine urge to slowly bleed out here.” The joke earned over 16.6 million views and 530,000 likes.
The same user replied to their quote tweet with a repost of a video by TikTok user @re7seven depicting an animated version of this scene and crossing it with moments from the anime BERSERK.
The catchphrase makes use of the urge-focused meme genre of phrases that begin with “the masculine urge to” or “the feminine urge to.” Other versions include “the non-binary urge to” or you can replace the gender with any type of descriptor. These statements began to appear on Twitter around 2021.
The Masculine Urge To Slowly Bleed Out Here spreads
As the original meme tweet went viral, other Twitter users began to post their own examples of where they would like to bleed out and die in triumph. It started with similar snowy scenes and references to other pieces of fiction in which grizzled men (or man-coded robots) lie down and perish like the bad dudes they are.
Predictably, people soon expanded the joke as it grew into November to take place in much more unexpected settings like the shop from Toy Story 2 or an old McDonald’s play place. As these leaked into unsuspecting users’ feeds, people began to ask why so many men wanted to bleed to death in places, and that itself became a joke.
Examples
Related memes:
- Men can’t stop tweeting about all the bar fights they get into
- This week on the internet: The feminine urge to use this meme
- The ‘And Just Like That…’ death scene became an immediate meme
- Are Men OK? Man Cave edition
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
