Bad Syndrome / Instead of Brain There Is a Dark Orb

About

Bad Syndrome or Instead of Brain There Is a Dark Orb is a surreal meme resembling a Wikipedia page for the fictional term "Bad Syndrome," the contents of which simply read, "Instead of brain there is a dark orb" and an image demonstrating the dark orb in the brain. The meme was originally posted to Twitter by @speshfresh in 2018 and became an exploitable meme format over the following years in which users replace aspects of the image, including the name of the syndrome and the image, altering the context.

Origin

On October 30th, 2018, now-deleted Twitter^[1] user @speshfresh posted a surreal meme that is meant to look like a screenshot of a Wikipedia page for "Bad Syndrome." The page reads, "Instead of brain there is a dark orb" and features a drawing of what that might look like. The post gained over 100 likes before it was removed on an unknown date (shown below).

Spread

The meme gained viral spread over the following months, inspiring edits. For example, on January 7th, 2020, Instagram^[2] user mrbaggyeyed posted a version placing Hatsune Miku in the brain, garnering around 80 likes in three years. On April 24th, Instagram^[3] user surrealvault on April 24th, 2020, garnering over 55,300 likes in three years. On October 21st, Tumblr^[4] user coldwind-shiningstars posted a version of the image replacing "bad syndrome" with "good and cool syndrome" and placing an image of a wizard in the brain, garnering over 33,200 notes in three years (shown below).

In March 2021, a webpage fully recreating the meme was put online at johncenatwitter.com/syndrome.^[5] On June 18th, Instagram^[6] user kirbymutual posted a Kirby edit of the image, garnering over 9,800 likes in two years (shown below, left). On October 4th, Facebook^[7] page Haikyuu posted a Haikyuu!! edit of the meme, garnering over 9,900 reactions and 1,400 shares in the same rough span of time (shown below, right).

On September 26th, 2022, Redditor u/Snailtan posted an edit of the original meme to /r/surrealmemes^[8] that garnered over 2,800 upvotes in 10 months. On June 10th, 2023, Facebook^[9] user Food In Places It Shouldn’t Be posted an edit that gained over 2,100 reactions in a month (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References