The That Feeling When Knee Surgery Is Tomorrow meme, aka Blue Grinch meme, is a very specific feeling of knowing that your knee surgery is tomorrow. As a brainrot meme, Its specificity is the joke, so in a way, it is also a meta-commentary and joke about meme culture generally.
Often memes try to connect to a much broader feeling for a more general appeal, whereas the knee surgery one is much more narrow in scope.
On the other hand, its popularity indicates that a lot of people get it. Or are at least pretending to.
Meme basics:
- Meme creator: Unknown (first surfaced on MemeCreator.org)
- Meme type: Image Macro / Exploitable Format
- First appearance: Circa 2021
- Origin source: Instagram
- Peak popularity: October 2022
- Notable variations
- The blue Grinch smiling
- Dancing Drake
- Hopping squirrel
Where did the Blue Grinch ‘Knee Surgery’ meme come from?
The meme began before the Blue Grinch appeared with an unknown MemeCreator.org user in 2021. The first representative of the sentiment was a squirrel. In the photo, the squirrel stands on its hind legs with its front paws up, looking very excited about something. It went viral on the Instagram page @stupid.fricken.meme on April 6, 2021.
A few months later, Redditor /u/ZyeAxe used a picture of Drake grooving out as a header for a listicle about knee surgery memes, which developed its own subreddit, /r/Kneesurgerymemes.
Popularity
The most popular version of the meme came from Instagram user @blinch.feels in a now-deleted post, showing the Blue Grinch iteration of the meme. It was reshared by the Instagram account Grubburd in October 2022, then it ended up on /r/Kneesurgerymemes in 2022.
On Dec. 1, 2024, renowned online culture reporter Katie Notopolous wrote on Bluesky, “‘Knee surgery’ is the hottest meme right now. Specifically the Grinch saying he has knee surgery tomorrow. There are dozens of blinch (blue grinch) knee surgery meme accounts on Instagram. This is what your children are doing.”
Internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz cited Notopolous’ post in a Grinch meme explainer in her newsletter User Mag on Dec. 2, 2024, where she called it “the spiritual successor to the Instagram meme culture of 2018 that birthed The World Record Egg and same post every day accounts.”
“Posting the blue Grinch knee surgery meme is a low pressure way to build community online, make connections with other young people who like absurdist humor, and potentially go viral if your meme account pops off,” wrote Lorenz.
Ok, but what does the ‘That Feeling When Knee Surgery Is Tomorrow‘ meme mean?
The Knee surgery memes are stubbornly apolitical…so far. We’ve all learned how quickly a seemingly innocuous meme can take a turn. But it is an absurdist, nonsensical meme, a meme about memes. A meme for memeheads, if you will. Requests to explain it will often be answered with: “25+ Best Knee Surgery Memes.”
The post was shared to subreddit r/explainthejoke and here is the best explanation: “The grinch is blue here because knee surgery is tomorrow.”
Other replies to users asking to have the joke explained to them are met with variations of the joke, which is a feature of a brain rot meme.
The Grinch Meme spawns cryptocurrency meme coins
As of Dec. 10, 2024, there are two Grinch-themed cryptocurrency meme coins: the $KNEE coin, which Lorenz pointed out is being hyped on X as a coin that will hit $100 market cap, and $GEPE, which was launched on Dec 2, 2024, and combines the character of the Grinch with Pepe the Frog.
Users on X are claiming that Knee coin will one day reach $100M market cap.
Meme variations
The words “The Feeling When Knee Surgery Is Tomorrow” can be paired with all sorts of images, usually ones where people look ecstatic. Here are some examples:
Recent use
People now use the meme sometimes in response to bad news or expectations, sort of as a way of saying they’re smiling through the pain of something. For example, in this exchange on X, formerly Twitter, where a post about the potential cost of a game upgrade received several blue Grinches in the replies.
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