The Matthew McConaughey Smoking meme (aka Rust Cohle Smoking) is a still photo of McConaughey’s character Rust Cohle from the HBO series True Detective, and is most often used as a reaction image to express worry, anxiety or an intense fixation on a topic.
What is the Matthew McConaughey Smoking meme?
The Matthew McConaughey Smoking meme depicts McConaughey’s character Rust Cohle sucking intensely on a cigarette, eyes transfixed on something outside of the frame, sometimes with the bald head of an ancillary character (a drug dealer) in the foreground. In general, the meme is usually used as a reaction image or image macro (a captioned image that consists of a photograph attached to a catchphrase) to express intensity or anxiety.
Meme basics:
- Meme creator: HBO/Ακάλυπτος Ανδρέας
- Meme type: reaction/image macro
- First appearance: February 9th, 2014 (HBO airing), January 9th, 2016 (Youtube upload)
- Origin source: Ακάλυπτος Ανδρέας
- Used to convey: anxiety, intensity, worry
- Peak popularity: November 2023
How is the Matthew McConaughey Smoking meme used?
Though context-dependent, the meme is generally used to convey worry, anxiety, intense attention, fixation, or tension around a high-pressure topic or situation, often a reaction to an online discussion or thread.
Where does the meme come from?
The meme comes from the fourth episode of True Detective, entitled “Who Goes There.” The episode’s storyline revolves around Detective Rust Cohle taking cocaine while undercover; during the scene, he does cocaine with a drug dealer and takes a long, intense inhale from a cigarette.
On Jan. 9, 2016, Youtuber Ακάλυπτος Ανδρέας posted a clip of the scene. It has since received 997K views and has had many incarnations on a multitude of platforms.
Origin and spread
On April 12th, 2015, X user @rustcohle95 shared the image with the caption, “Trying to resist watching the leaked Game of Thrones episodes like,” and from there the meme gained traction, primarily on on Reddit.
Over the next few years, the meme expanded beyond Reddit to X, TikTok, and other social media platforms.
Cultural context
While the meme exists in a specific cultural moment (the public embracing “prestige TV,’ the cultural phenomena of True Detective and Matthew McConaughey as a serious actor) the meaning itself has grown beyond that, to indicate our cultural hyper-fixation on certain topics and the excess and accessibility of online culture, as a whole.
Variations
Because of our intense gaze and examination of different subject matter, many variations have sprung up around to, including McConaughey smoking many cigarettes at once, staring intensely at a phone, or replaced entirely with animals or other characters.
More reaction memes:
- My Reaction To That Information: a meme
- ‘Wallahi, I’m Finished’—A reaction meme for when you’re cooked
- Explaining the ‘I Don’t Really Care If Something Good Happened to You’ meme
- The Silly Dog In A Propeller Hat meme is for when you feel like a kid again
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