Gotcha!

Unreasonable Doubt Social media loves a good spat. The weapon of choice? Receipts.

- Rachel Dodes

The receipts are everywhere, crumpled in corners, condensed in clouds, spilling out into Instagram feeds. “William Barr Better Have the Receipts on the Russia Probe,” read a recent headline on CNN. On MSNBC's official hardball Instagram account last summer, former Trump adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman teased an appearance on the show, saying, “I’m talking Michael Cohen, and I brought some receipts.” The Real Housewives franchise has become so reliant upon receipts that Bravo should embrace its future as an auditing firm. Our culture is an overstuffed wallet after a two-week business trip, awaiting an epic reimbursement that, sadly, will never be credited to our account.

Before we all became keepers of kompromat, armed with our smartphones and our unlimited data-storage plans, receipts were pieces of paper, documents demonstrating that some good or service had been purchased. Then along came Whitney Houston, credited with the modern coinage in 2002. “I want to see the receipts,” she said in an interview with Diane Sawyer, in response to the allegation that she had spent $730,000 on drugs. Demanding proof of purchase from a drug dealer to validate a tabloid headline was a genius retort, verging on dadaist, a rejection of the premise of the question itself. The exchange “quickly became legendary,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary blog, as the quote—revived by viral YouTube clips and, then, GIFs—became a colloquial way to insist upon proof, even and especially when none exists.