Since memes began, cats have ruled the internet. Sure, people love their dogs and their goldfish and their bearded dragons, but if there were ever online battles for meme domination, the cats won the war.
One such popular post is known as the Crying Cat meme. It currently rules over other memes and has even spawned all kinds of merchandise, from t-shirts to metal prints that can be hung up on your living room wall. So, how did it get started and how do people use this meme?
The first known instance of the Crying Cat was published by an anonymous user through Meme Generator on June 11, 2014 — so this meme has been around for a while before its recent resurgence. The first picture is a version of Serious Cat that was changed in Photoshop. Four years later, this crying cat meme has generated more than 925 new images.
In 2016, an anonymous 4chan poster published an image of a bigger cat that had the same expression on its face and captioned it: “First it’s smug, then it’s fat. It’s living my life.” The photo is a photoshopped version of a different photograph of a sleeping cat.
Since then, the meme has been shared many times and gone viral. On January 27, 2017, a Facebook user named smokememe posted the picture and captioned it: “sad react only.” A year and half later, the post received more than 2,200 reactions and 440 shares.
On April 10, 2018, a Redditor named plebdev asked members of the /r/OutOfTheLoop subreddit, “What’s the origin of the crying cat pictures, and why am I seeing them all over now?” This sparked interest in the meme and more and more people shared it widely.
Users across all social media platforms have continued to post various pictures of big-eyed, sad-looking cats with relatable captions about sadness, laziness, and mental health — most of them with a comedic bent.