"Address Me" Elephant

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About

"Address Me" Elephant is a reaction image of an elephant standing in the middle of a room captioned, "Address me," a visualization of the idea of addressing "the elephant in the room," an expression meaning the obvious issue that nobody wants to talk about. The stock image of the elephant was first posted online in 2017, with the "address me" caption being added in later years. The meme became increasingly popularized throughout 2025 as a reaction used to call a poster out for failing to address something. The elephant meme also inspired edits, redraws and other variants, where the caption "address me" in a similar or the same font is edited over other images.

Origin

On April 8th, 2017, iStock^[1] user mphillips007 uploaded an image of an elephant standing in a conference room surrounded by knocked over chairs and items, titled, "Elephant in the Room stock photo." The image was used that year in an article by Horizon Leadership.^[2]

The earliest known meme to use the elephant image was posted by Redditor u/Xxmeatdestroyer69xX to the /r/memes^[3] subreddit on August 15th, 2019, garnering roughly 30 upvotes in six years. The meme places the TikTok logo over the elephant and is titled, "Can we address the elephant in the room?" although it is unclear what exactly the meme is referencing.

The elephant continued to inspire some memes over the following years, such as an iFunny^[4] meme with one like on December 11th, 2021, and a post by Instagram^[5] user _______bagel_______ on November 27th, 2023, that gained over 14,000 likes in two years.

On June 12th, 2025, X^[6] user @Richard_Vixen posted an image of the elephant with the caption "address me" across the bottom, writing, "How I feel when I’m in a room with one of my ops," gaining about six likes in three months. This is the earliest known version of the "address me" meme.

Spread

The "Address Me" Elephant meme garnered viral spread over the following months as it was shared on various sites and social media platforms in the latter half of 2025.

On July 3rd, 2025, it was posted to Tenor.^[7] On the same day, TikToker^[8] @aznbf posted a video commenting on how funny the saying "let's address the elephant in the room" is, resulting in the meme and variants of the meme being posted in the comments section. The video gained over 111,000 views in two months.

On September 16th, X^[9] user @FishsPencil posted an edit of the meme depicting the elephant as the Arabic Strawberry Elephant, garnering around 400 likes in just over a week.

On September 19th, 2025, X^[10] user @wariocore posted an edit of the elephant depicting him as Gaster from Undertale in response to a post by the game's creator, Toby Fox, announcing that he can change the character's name at any save during the game's 10th anniversary stream. The post jokes that Fox should acknowledge that Gaster is repeatedly one of the most voted-on names. It gained over 32,000 likes in a week.

The elephant continued to be used in reference to the Undertale stream. For example, on September 20th, X^[11] user @Krystal793210 posted it under the caption, "The new area in Undertale ruins," garnering over 13,000 likes in five days.

On September 21st, 2025, X^[12] user @VAsgore_ posted an edit of several Undertale characters riding the elephant, writing, "This address me elphant is getting pretty crowded…," suggesting Fox has a lot of unanswered questions to address, garnering over 31,000 likes in four days.