An illustration known as the "White rabbit pointing at a clock" meme has recently taken off on social media as a reaction image about being punctual. Naturally, the internet took that urgency and twisted it into something downright silly.
What is the "white rabbit pointing at a clock" meme?
At its core, the meme captures a smugness around time and potentially missing something important. The Alice in Wonderland-styled white rabbit, dressed in a blue coat and holding up a pocket watch, appears to scold the viewer for being late. Because of that, the meme naturally fits situations where someone is running out of time, or at least thinks they are.
People have attached captions that exaggerate the rabbit’s message. For example, some labeled it with lines like, "Me when my friend says they’ll be ready in five minutes." As a result, the meme has become shorthand for impatience or looming deadlines. Over time, creators have used it more creatively, giving it ironic or absurd twists.
Origins of the "white rabbit pointing at a clock" meme
The meme looks like something an AI tool could have made, and some people seemed to share AI-generated versions of the meme art. However, it actually came from a piece of digital art that was more than a decade old.
Artist Luz Tapia (@luztapiaart) first painted the image in March 2012. According to the artist, the Photoshop file itself is timestamped from that period, and her visible signature on the artwork supports the same date. She initially uploaded it to her DeviantArt page before later removing it.
A few years later, the image resurfaced on Pinterest without crediting the original artist, before it grew in popularity as a meme in May 2025.
Tapia confirmed she painted it digitally long before the recent wave of AI art tools existed. She even posted the original version, complete with videos of her going through all of its layers, as proof.
"Also, I still have the original PSD and here you'll see me hiding the base layers below the textures and after that, the texture layers. When I hide the eye you can see the sketch below!" she wrote, adding in a follow-up tweet, "And even more proof, behold the original file and folder with the dates!! Also here I go hiding layer by layer until the very first sketch. The clock looking like that was me just being lazy and scribbling to give the illusion of detail because this took me AGES."
The artwork is based on an official piece from the 2010 Alice in Wonderland movie. While it looks very similar to the official artwork, it was fully sketched and painted by Tapia herself.
She talked about the origins of the piece, saying, "There's no meaning to this sorry! I was practicing using this image as reference. I never claimed I 'own the character' but the viral image is my art."
TikTok revived the image and turned it into a meme
The image stayed largely dormant until TikTokers rediscovered it in May 2025. @boxed3k posted one of the earliest meme versions, potentially even the original one, on May 14. Their text overlay read, "How teachers be posted up when you start packing 1 minute before class ends." They paired it with the audio clip "So Fun" by Seven Harris.
From there, the meme snowballed, spreading over to other social media platforms. Others reused the same sound and image to create similar jokes. The memes focused on literal time-based humor. Some examples include people being late, counting down minutes, or waiting impatiently for something to happen.
Examples of the white rabbit pointing at a clock meme
@OvOBrezzzy tweeted, "When the side character randomly starts getting to much screen time."
The Daily Dot has reached out to @luztapiaart for comment via X.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s newsletter here.
