These "They Did Surgery On A Grape" Memes Are Here To End 2018 On A Very Weird Note

Just because 2018 is almost over doesn't mean this year's wild memes are coming to a halt anytime soon. So far in 2018, we've had Yanny and Laurel memes, Young Thug on the computer meme, and the Melania Trump gardening meme. Now, the internet has found a new obsession from a 2010 video about a robot called da Vinci Xi doing surgery on fruit. If you've been on the internet at all these past few weeks, you know what I'm talking about — these memes about "they did surgery on a grape" are the year's weirdest memes yet.

Even though tweets about "they did surgery on a grape" popped up on Nov. 23 and Nov. 24, the video behind the meme was originally posted on YouTube on Aug. 11, 2010 — and it comes from Edward Hospital in Naperville, Illinois. More recently, a May 2018 tweet from the Peter Mac Cancer Center described how the da Vinci Xi robot is able to perform precision surgery and shows stills of the little robot apparatus performing surgery on — you guessed it — a grape. According to a description from a 2010 video on the Edward Hospital YouTube channel, the "da Vinci Surgical System: Surgery on a grape" video showcased the the technology created to stitch a grape back together. Per the video, it's precision assists with a "range of minimally invasive procedures in gynecology, urology, thoracic and general surgery."

In 2015, before the meme of this wild surgery was even a thought in someone's mind, Mic revealed that the robot doing the surgery costs an estimated $2 million and at the time had performed over one million surgeries. Per Mic, the FDA approved the da Vinci Robot back in 2000 and there are over 2,000 da Vinci units in the United States alone. That's a whole lot of grape surgeries!

But of course, the internet can't let us have nice things, including medical advancements from cancer centers, without meme-ifying them. Though the meme itself is kind of silly, it's easy to understand why people would be baffled by "surgery on a grape," with or without all the medical context. Here are a handful of "They did surgery on a grape" memes on Twitter that poke fun at the whole thing.

Here's a tweet from the Peter Mac Cancer Center, with nothing but actual grape surgery photos (No memes here!).

Like all the great and weird memes that came before surgery grape, this one is sure to disappear into the internet void in due time, but for now Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram are eating up the grape content (pun intended). "They did surgery on a grape" will join a long lone of food and food culture memes like Chopped anxiety memes, Gordon Ramsay is not pleased memes, and the overripe avocado memes.

Even though 2018 has had its share of eyebrow-raising moments, surgery on a grape is definitely one that has caught the internet's eye just as the year is about to come to a close. Regardless of why people are joining in on the grape surgery meme fun, people will keep posting, reposting, and creating variations until the hype fizzles out. I can't wait to see what memes 2019 brings!