We Did It, We Time Traveled

Origin

The comic was drawn by SrGrafo, a Reddit-based artist known for producing rapid, reactive four-panel comics designed from the outset to be edited by other people. He posted it on June 15, 2019.

The setup is simple: two time travellers arrive somewhere, celebrate their success, and then try to work out when they have landed by asking a bystander a question. The bystander’s answer reveals the year — not through a date, but through a cultural detail only true in that specific moment.

The r/gaming post took over 106,000 upvotes within three days.

What it means / how it’s used

The format is a period-identification joke. The punchline is always a detail that dates a moment precisely: a discourse that only existed for a few months, a product that was briefly ubiquitous, a controversy everyone has since forgotten.

Its strength is that it rewards specificity. A good version names something so narrowly time-bound that recognising it is itself the joke — a shared memory of a period that has already vanished.

Common uses:

• Identifying a year by an internet argument that defined it.
• Gaming versions naming a patch, release, or controversy.
• Nostalgic versions about a childhood era.
• Versions where the travellers land somewhere they immediately want to leave.

How it spread

SrGrafo’s comics are unusual in that they are built to be exploited. He drew in a clean, simple style, published templates himself, and actively encouraged edits — an approach that made his work spread faster than comics that have to be reverse-engineered into templates.

This one spread within hours. A Game of Thrones version took 16,400+ upvotes, and a version referencing YouTube Rewind took 11,800+, both within days of the original. The format then settled into permanent rotation, resurfacing whenever a moment feels distinctly of its time.

Its home community matters too. The original went to r/gaming, and gaming has an unusually precise sense of chronology — patches, releases, and controversies are dated events with exact anniversaries, which gives the format a bottomless supply of punchlines that pin a year down to the week.

Notable examples & variations

• Fandom versions identifying a year by a franchise event.
• Gaming versions naming a specific patch or release.
• Versions where the answer reveals a year in the future.
• Extended versions with several bystanders narrowing the date.
• Redrawn versions in other artists’ styles.

Legacy / cultural impact

The comic is one of the most-used templates SrGrafo produced, and part of a broader shift in how meme templates are made: rather than being scavenged from existing media, a growing share are drawn deliberately by artists who intend them to be edited.

The format also does something genuinely useful. It is one of the internet’s better tools for capturing how quickly online culture turns over — a joke that only lands if you remember a moment that was inescapable for two weeks and then disappeared entirely.