About

“Shart in Mart” is a rhyming expression used to mock Americans who defecate themselves in grocery stores. The phrase was popularized on 4chan’s /pol/ (politically incorrect) and /int/ (international) boards in response to several photographs of grocery store shoppers with brown stains on their pants submitted to the site in late August 2016.

Origin

On August 17th, 2016, an anonymous 4chan user submitted a collage of various grocery store customers with brown stains on the backside on their pants with the caption “mfw americunts shit in public / shart in mart” (shown below).

Precursor: “Poo in the Loo”

“Poo in the Loo” is a catchphrase used to mock India’s open defecation issues, which is employed on some online communities like 4chan in order to make fun of Indian users. The earliest known post using the rhyme was submitted to /int/ on July 13th, 2015.

Spread

On August 20th, Redditor Racego submitted a screenshot of a 4chan thread titled “The United Nations of Shitposting,” in which several posters from different countries complete the phrase “shart in mart” (shown below). Within four days, the post gathered upwards of 990 votes (90% upvoted) and 30 comments on /r/4chan.^[1]

On August 21st, a Swedish poster submitted “shart in mart”-themed parody lyrics for the 1982 heavy metal song “Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden to /pol/. The thread was subsequently saved on the 4plebs archive site (shown below).^[5]

On August 22nd, Redditor Guac_Emporer submitted another screenshot of a “shart in mart” thread titled “Americans get triggered by the Shart In Mart meme” (shown below, left). The following day, shart-themed parody lyrics for “The Star-Spangled Banner” were submitted to /pol/ (shown below, right).^[6]

On August 24th, 2016, a /pol/ user submitted a Google Trends graph showing a sharp rise for the query “sharp in mart” with the caption “Jesus Christ what is happening?” (shown below).^[4]

Search Interest

External References