And Why He Eepy?

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Part of a series on Why He Ourple?. [View Related Entries]

About

And Why He Eepy? refers to a series of memes using a caption with a purposeful misspelling of the word "sleepy" alongside images of a sleepy-looking animal, such as a cat, or various characters. The catchphrase is a reference to the Why He Ourple? meme and was first posted to Twitter in late 2021, inspiring variants over the following year, typically exploitable image macros and redraws of the original.

Origin

On November 24th, 2021, Twitter^[1] user @AnimalsCaption posted a GIF of a kitten falling asleep on a cup of coffee captioned "and why he eepy 😂" garnering over 980 likes and 40 retweets in a year (shown below).

Spread

The GIF gained viral spread over the following weeks. It was reposted by Twitter^[2] user @DRAGONOFDOJlMA on December 11th, 2021, garnering over 3,000 likes in a year, and then by Instagram^[3] user mememonk_ on December 14th, garnering over 52,000 views and 7,000 likes in a similar timeframe.

On January 12th, 2022, Instagram^[4] user derfloppa posted an image macro using the caption over an image of floppa, garnering over 330 likes in 10 months (shown below). This is the earliest known meme to use the phrase outside the original. On January 17th, Twitter^[5] user @lynasdf posted a piece of fan art redrawing the original meme as a Pokemon, garnering over 320 likes in 10 months (shown below, right).

On March 2nd, Instagram^[6] user matthew.niverse posted a new video version of the meme showing a different cat falling asleep under the caption, garnering over 6,200 likes and 34,000 views in eight months (shown below).

On September 11th, 2022, Instagram^[7] user monkey.posting posted a version of the meme with a sleeping monkey image, garnering over 6,000 likes in two months (shown below, left). On October 15th, the coolmathgames Instagram^[8] page posted a meme using the phrase, garnering over 36,000 likes in a month (shown below, right).