🎭 Meme Generator

The internet's picture jokes, explained - and made in seconds.

Stories

• What is a meme, anyway? - A word a biologist made up in 1976 now names the internet's favourite kind of joke. How a picture and two lines of text became a language millions of people speak.
• Top text, bottom text: the grammar of a meme - White capital letters with a black outline, one line above the picture, one below. Every part of the classic meme layout is doing a job.
• Advice animals: the colour-wheel years - A dog in front of a rainbow wheel started a whole family of characters, each with one personality and one job. How Advice Dog's descendants took over the internet around 2010.
• Rage comics: when the internet drew itself in MS Paint - Wobbly lines, a handful of faces and one big feeling per panel. The crude comics that gave us Trollface, Forever Alone and Y U No.
• Meme Celebrities: the people behind the faces - A yearbook photo, a stock photo shoot, a day at the beach. Nine ordinary people who woke up one morning to find their face had become a joke the whole world knew.
• From the big screen to the top text - A line from The Lord of the Rings, a smirk from 1971, a beer advert and a squinting cartoon. How film and TV became the internet's favourite raw material.
• Beyond two lines: panels, boxes and captions - Top and bottom text is only one way to caption a picture. The newer formats put words in boxes, beside panels or above the image - and you can make all of them here.
• How to make a meme that lands - Pick the right face, follow its formula, keep it short and be specific. Five rules from the millions of posts made on this site.

Meme celebrities

• Bad Luck Brian: the yearbook photo that went wrong on purpose - Kyle Craven pulled a goofy face for his school picture in Ohio. Seven years later a friend posted it online, and the unluckiest boy on the internet was born.
• Hide the Pain Harold: the stock photo model who smiled through it - A retired Hungarian engineer posed for a few hundred stock photos. The internet looked at his smile and saw a man quietly falling apart.
• First World Problems: the actress who cried on cue - Silvia Bottini was asked to cry for a stock photo on a trip to Shanghai. Three years later her tears were the face of every trivial complaint online.
• Overly Attached Girlfriend: the stare that started a YouTube career - Laina Morris made a joke video for a Justin Bieber contest and stared into the camera a little too long. One frame of it became one of 2012's biggest memes.
• Success Kid: the beach photo that paid for a kidney - Laney Griner photographed her baby son on a beach with a fistful of sand. His triumphant face became the internet's symbol of small wins - and later helped save his father's life.
• Scumbag Steve: the guy in the sideways cap - Blake Boston's mother took a photo of him at 16. Five years later the internet decided he was the worst roommate in the world.
• Disaster Girl: the smile in front of the fire - Zoë Roth was four when her father photographed her grinning in front of a burning house. The fire was a training exercise; the smirk became immortal.
• Ridiculously Photogenic Guy: the runner who looked too good - Everyone else in the race looked exhausted. Zeddie Little looked like he was in an advert. One photo made him the internet's most handsome stranger.
• Ermahgerd: the girl with the Goosebumps books - Two friends with a Polaroid camera staged a nerdy photo shoot in the late 1990s. Thirteen years later it gave the internet a whole new way of talking.

The classics, explained

The Most Interesting Man In The World

The Most Interesting Man in the World is actor Jonathan Goldsmith in Dos Equis beer's ad campaign, which began in 2006.

Philosoraptor

Philosoraptor is a drawing of a velociraptor with its claw on its chin, lost in thought. It started as a T-shirt design by LonnieMachin and became an advice animal around 2008.

Success Kid

Success Kid is Sammy Griner, photographed on a beach in 2007 by his mother, Laney Griner, when he was about eleven months old. He's clutching a fist of sand with a look of total determination.

Skeptical 3rd World Kid

Third World Skeptical Kid is a photo of a young African boy giving the camera a long, doubtful sideways look. The original photo's source is not well documented. The joke is never on him.

First World Problems

First World Problems is a stock photo of a woman crying with her hand over her face. The phrase is older than the meme; around 2011 this picture became its face.

Grumpy Cat

Grumpy Cat was Tardar Sauce, a cat from Arizona whose feline dwarfism and underbite gave her a permanent frown. Her owner's brother posted her photos to Reddit in 2012. She died in 2019.

Socially Awkward Penguin

Socially Awkward Penguin is a photo of a penguin turning awkwardly sideways, cut out on a blue background. The picture comes from National Geographic's photo library.

Y U No

Y U No is a rage comic face: a crudely drawn figure in a Japanese manga style, both arms raised in exasperation, mouth wide open. It became one of the internet's most used formats around 2011.

Forever Alone

Forever Alone is a rage comic face: a lumpy, round face with tears in its eyes and a brave, wobbly smile. It appeared around 2010 and became the internet's symbol of loneliness.

Futurama Fry

Futurama Fry, also called Not Sure If, is Philip J. Fry from the animated series Futurama, squinting with deep suspicion. The frame is from the 2000 episode "The Lesser of Two Evils."

One Does Not Simply

One Does Not Simply comes from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).

Scumbag Steve

Scumbag Steve is Blake Boston, a young man from Massachusetts in a sideways cap and a fur-lined coat, photographed by his mother in a doorway. The photo appeared on Reddit in 2011.

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