Flex Tape
Where it came from
Phil Swift's infomercial for Flex Tape, where he shouts "THAT'S A LOT OF DAMAGE!" while slapping a piece of tape on a leaking boat. The clip and still images went viral in 2018.
Phil Swift holds up a roll of Flex Tape over a scene of catastrophic damage. "THAT'S A LOT OF DAMAGE!" you caption. The joke is that the problem in the image is clearly way beyond what any tape could fix — a collapsed building, a broken relationship, a global event — and the proposed fix is a single strip of adhesive.
It's the "wildly inadequate solution to a massive problem" meme. The contrast between the scale of the disaster and the absurd tininess of Flex Tape is the entire joke. Phil Swift's complete confidence that the tape will fix everything is what sells it.
Still in active use, especially for policy and "this is not going to work" posts.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
