Loss
You might remember it as loss.jpg, Ctrl+Alt+Del Loss strip
One line; two lines, one shorter; two equal lines; one line upright and one lying flat
Biggest memes ever24 of 32
2008·Early YouTube·unexpected
A wordless four-panel comic strip about a miscarriage, reduced by the internet to an arrangement of seven lines.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- loss.jpg
- Spread in
- 2008
- Began as
- A web page
- Where it started
- cad-comic.com
- Format
- Meme
- Made by
- Tim Buckley
- Taken from
- A strip in his gaming webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del, published on 2 June 2008
- What it said
- One line; two lines, one shorter; two equal lines; one line upright and one lying flat
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
On 2 June 2008 Tim Buckley published a strip of his gaming webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del in which the protagonist arrives at a hospital and finds his fiancée weeping after a miscarriage. There is no dialogue. Four panels: a man walking, a man at a door, a doctor, two figures by a bed.
Loss is embedded in games, album covers, official brand posts and the architecture of buildings, usually as a joke about how far the abstraction can be pushed before it stops being recognisable. It has outlived the argument it started, and most people who spot it have never read the comic.
Why it matteredWhat changed
It is the meme that became an arrangement of lines. People stopped needing the drawing and kept only the positions of the figures.
TimelineIn order
- Posted
Tim Buckley publishes the strip. A man runs into a hospital and finds his partner crying in a bed.1
- Later
Buckley says in an interview that he does not regret the strip, and that women have told him the storyline helped them.1
- Remixed
On the tenth anniversary Buckley replaces the strip on his site with one in which the man smirks at the reader. The original is back a day later.1
- Remixed
He replaces it again for a day, this time with a strip showing a successful birth.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asThe comic says she has had a miscarriage.
ActuallyIt has no words. The miscarriage is implied.1
Commonly remembered asIt was mocked for being badly drawn.
ActuallyIt was mocked for the change of tone: a comic about video-game jokes turning, without warning, to this.1
LegacyWhat it left behind
- Buckley wrote that the storyline was planned years in advance and drew on a miscarriage in his own life.1
More from hereIn this collection
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · copied, redrawn and reused until the original stopped mattering · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later · the upload that made its maker known
This began as a web page, not as a video. Originally published on cad-comic.com.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as a web page, not as a video. Originally published on cad-comic.com.
Created by Tim Buckley. Established by research, not by who posted the copy shown here.
More from 2008You were there
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things