When I was a kid, I never cared too much about superheroes. Sure, I thought, it would be cool to fly like Superman or swing from buildings like Spiderman or…be rich and buy a lot of stuff like Batman, but none of that tickled my imagination enough to turn into full-on fantasies in my mind. What did intrigue me were people I would see (mostly characters on TV) who seemed to have a perfect response to everything. Always a zinger, always an incredible comeback. THAT was the superpower I wanted to have.
Cut to full-blown adulthood and sadly I have not yet fallen into a vat of radioactive clapbacks. Yet. But I still admire when people come up with those oh-so-perfect responses, and a great place to find a huge collection of them is on the subreddit r/clevercomebacks. Here are 15 examples of the wonderful things you can find there.
15. If at first you don’t succeed…
Can we do away with this “no” means “try harder” narrative, please? It’s seriously toxic for everybody involved.
14. Sucks to suck
This is the tagline for a roomba horror film and I’m here for it.
13. New math
Don’t try to out-nerd a nerd.
12. Ask a stupid question…
…get a stupid answer.
Source: kingie_d on Reddit
11. Love is blind
Gonna need to call the fire department for this burn.
10. That’s deep, man
If Fight Club was a bathroom stall.
9. Ouch
Heh…good thing we’ve…fixed that, huh? *sigh*
Via: DeHosure on Reddit
8. Alien vs. pre-dater
Sadly a lot of people genuinely think this way.
Via: Viv_J04
7. Red-handed
Answer if you’re not chicken.
Via: GameZedd01 on Reddit
6. Poetry in motion
Hey, I’d take 3 at this point.
5. Super spicy
Wendy’s didn’t come to play.
keep buying spicy nuggs for the rest of your life
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) February 4, 2020
4. Matter of fact
It’s all fun and semantic games until somebody gets tased.
Woman in front of me at airport security has a bottle of frozen water. They want to take it. She says it's not a liquid.
— Isaac Haxton (@ikepoker) August 29, 2013
3. Soaking what
I genuinely don’t understand some peoples’ idea of masculinity.
https://twitter.com/_jharold/status/851845322380890116
2. Time flies
She’s right, you know.
https://twitter.com/Makingsofabw/status/1169723949678301186
1. Destroyed
Get your robots in line, Google.
Hard to say, your algorithm destroyed most of them.
— Arlo 🐀 (@ArloStuff) January 16, 2019
I may never reach the heights of these kinds of responses, but a man can dream. Or maybe I’ve still got time to become Batman rich instead.
What’s the greatest clapback you’ve ever witnessed?
Tell us in the comments.