Almost Friday / Almost Paranoid

Submission 120

About

Almost Friday refers to a series of Thank God It's Friday-themed image macros posted on Thursday which announce that Friday is coming up next, which are usually captioned "Almost Friday" in Lobster font. Started in 2020 by social media page Friday Beers and inspiring a dedicated meme page, the format involves combining the text with various images. In 2022, the format spawned a derivative meme format known as Almost Paranoid on Telegram.

Origin

The Almost Friday image macros originate from social media network Friday Beers and are typically memorable photographs, still images from films and pics that go hard, are captioned with the phrase "Almost Friday" in Lobster Font. The earliest found collection of Almost Friday macros was posted by Friday Beers on Facebook^[1] on May 28th, 2020, although earlier posts may exist (example shown below).

Spread

The page posted a variety of Almost Friday posts in the 2020s, with the edits posted on Thursday to affirm that Friday is coming up the next day. In June 2020, dedicated Instagram^[2] page almost.friday was created by Friday Beers, with the page regularly posting Almost Friday images along with other similar weekday-based macros such as "Officially Friday" "Humpday Mood", "Another Monday", etc. (example^[3] shown below).

Almost Paranoid

Almost Paranoid refers to an offshoot of the Almost Friday memes created and spread by the Telegram^[4] channel CVLT OF THE ESOTERIC LIFTER and their Instagram^[5]^[6] accounts optimisic.doomer.memes and paranoidachives. The image macros often use meme-famous characters and celebrities, such as Kyriakos Grizzly, Patrick Bateman and Alex Jones. The Telegram^[7] channel posted the earliest found collection of "Almost Paranoid" posts on September 16th, 2022 (example shown below).

The image saw further spread outside of Telegram through reposts on iFunny^[8] and other sites.

"It's Finally a Friday" is an exploitable image based on a dialogue from the Japanese manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Notable for its awkward and dramatic manner in which the characters celebrate the end of a work week, the three-pane cut is usually edited with custom caption to convey relief at the end of a long wait for a highly anticipated event. In late 2010s, the meme gained association with Yakuza Disco Minigame memes.