In each edition of web_crawlr we have exclusive original content every day. On Saturday our Video Producer Kyle Calise explores the origins and history of the most iconic memes online in his “Meme History” column. If you want to read columns like this a day before everyone else, subscribe to web_crawlr to get your daily scoop of internet culture delivered straight to your inbox.
Doubt. Suspicion. Irritation. Fuzzy Animals. These are the things the internet is made of, so what better way to encapsulate them all than in a single genre of memes?
The side-eye is a universal look, and when you see it you know what it means. Today we’re bringing you our top 6 favorite side-eye memes of all time.
6. Mr. Fresh
Mr. Fresh, so named because he’s apparently only interested in freshly-put-out food, is TikTok famous because clips of him were constantly reposted from a livestream on the Hello Street Cat app. This is a Chinese app where people can watch stray cats that come to feeders and other locations, usually as part of trap-neuter-return programs across China.
In October of 2023, Mr. Fresh took the internet by storm because often, he gazed very suspiciously and side-eyeingly at his food and the camera.
Cats have long been a staple of internet merriment, so on its face Mr. Fresh’s memes were no different than any of his predecessors. However, in early 2024, for reasons beyond any of us normal people, Chinese internet trolls began threatening him offering money as a reward for his on-camera-murder—which brought attention for all the wrong reasons.
Luckily for both Mr. Fresh and all the sane people of the web, before anything bad could happen he was caught by good guys, and subsequently adopted by a nice family.
5. Side Eye Horse
Next up, we have the side-eye horse.
This one is based on a wide-angle close-up shot of a horse which makes it look spooked and horrified for some reason. The photo first appeared on September 21st 2023, in a Facebook group called “This horse was assembled INCORRECTLY.”
By May of the following year, it had made it to X, then by July to Tumblr, where oftentimes artists draw in the body of the horse, often making it look way too small for the head, or omitting or adding body parts—adding to the weirdness of it all.
4. Bombastic Side Eye
Coming in at number four, there’s the side-eye meme that’s entirely a creation of TikTok. Early in 2023, a sound of someone saying “Side Eye!” was going around as a video meme applied to weird situations.
It was generally kind of quiet, mirroring the get-me-out-of-here hushedness of the captions often used to set the scene of the individual meme. But by the end of January, TikToker Malaika Norman tried to take it to the next level by saying, “bombastic side eye, criminal offensive side eye.”
It made its way to Urban Dictionary in the next few months, and now there’s a whole subgenre of videos in which people translate it into other languages—which get their own relatively big amounts of attention.
3. Side Eye Chloe
Rewinding the clock a bit, our number three pick comes from YouTube.
In September 2013, little Chloe’s parents posted a video where they surprised her and her big sister Lily with a trip to Disneyland. When Lily started crying, Chloe made a face that apparently she makes all the time, but to the unfamiliar, looks a little grossed out.
It was too perfect. Quickly this spread all over Tumblr, Reddit, and everywhere you get your memes.
2. Side Eye Michelle Obama
Our next meme comes not from some cute creature or the depths of an infinite scroller, but from a public figure who is, to many, a paragon of class and poise:
Michelle Obama.
At the 2017 presidential inauguration, Melania Trump gave Michelle a small gift in a Tiffany’s box, which Michelle didn’t seem to know what to do with. It resulted in a side-eye expression that many people found to convey a sense of being fed up, or generally just kind of over it.
This one actually prompted Merriam-Webster to add “side-eye” to the dictionary, suggesting that it expresses scorn, suspicion, disapproval, or curiosity.
1. SpongeBob Side Eye
And finally, our favorite side-eye meme comes in the form of the perennial palette cleanser that is SpongeBob Squarepants. SpongeBob has spawned any number of memes over the years, so it’s fitting that this isn’t properly one side eye meme but many.
Memers can choose from a variety of characters across settings and eras of the fan-favorite cartoon.
Everything from SpongeBob’s front door, to Mr.Krabs, to Squidward, to Mrs. Puff, to…you name it.
The list could go forever and eternity, but there’s our top six. Especially in today’s day and age we have every reason to be suspicious online, but let’s not forget that we can all laugh a little too.
These guys seem to have beaten us to both.
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