One does not simply / Walk into Mordor
A One Does Not Simply post.
You do not simply "pop into" the supermarket for milk. You leave with a candle, a bag of limes and a reusable bag you already owned four of. You forget the milk. You do not simply leave a family gathering. There is the first goodbye, the second goodbye in the hall, a leftover lasagne pressed into your hands, and a final 25-minute conversation at the car door. You do not simply open one tab to check a fact. Ninety minutes later there are 41 tabs, one of them is about Byzantine plumbing, and the fact remains unchecked. You do not simply "send a quick email" to IT. You send it, you get a ticket number, you get a survey about the ticket, and the printer still says "offline". **How it came about:** at the Council of Elrond in The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Boromir warns "One does not simply walk into Mordor" - a line that isn't in Tolkien's book at all. By the mid-2000s the frame of Sean Bean circling his finger was one of the web's best-known image macros, finished with whatever ordinary task feels like a quest. **Why it caught on:** the line takes itself completely seriously, so it fits any small thing that turned out to be hard - and the frame of a man explaining is the frame of everyone explaining.