“Pics or it didn’t happen” is cute, and I started seeing it only fairly recently on the Net.
Is there a history behind the expression?
I can add it to–and is a rejoinder to–“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes.”
Well, your rejoinder was from Chico Marx in Duck Soup (1933): “Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
One wishes Google Groups was still around. It might take it back further.
The author(s) of Kama Sutra might have heard this expression.
It actually goes back to Roman times, referring to an alleged incursion to Hadrian’s Wall.
“Obligatory ‘pix or it didn’t happen’” looks an awful lot like a reference to an established meme.
Cave wall art or it didn’t happen.
It does. That’s not uncommon, though. samclem can tell you that a lot of expressions appear in print with every indication that they are already familiar to the audience, no matter that no earlier source can be found.
I’m having a hard time pict-uring that.
“They did not know the war was over and were only berebelling or bereppelling one another by chance or necessity with sham bottles, mere and woiney, as betwinst Picturshirts and Scutticules, like their caractacurs in an Irish Ruman to sorowbrate the expeltsion of the Danos?”
–from a book by some guy
ETA: that is, spelled out in that very Irish Ruman. Kinda meta.