Black Cat Zoning Out

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About

Black Cat Zoning Out, also known as Black Cat Zoned Out or Staring Black Cat, refers to a video of a black cat staring blankly at a tan-colored cat which meme creators associated with "zoning out," pairing the video with captions related to losing focus or dissociating. The meme template trended mostly on TikTok in 2023, where creators used a greenscreen template to edit the cats over various backgrounds that coincided with the given caption. Also, TikTokers predominantly used the TikTok sound and song "aquatic ambience" by scizzie. The original video was filmed by a Japanese TikToker in March 2023.

Origin

On March 1st, 2023, TikToker^[1] @vivizirumugireo posted a video of two cats, showing a black one staring at a tan-colored one. After staring for a few seconds, the black cat attacked the other cat. Over the course of four months, the video gained roughly 242,800 plays and 21,000 likes (shown below, left). A few weeks later, on March 27th, 2023, TikToker^[2] @bygiftofnature posted a cropped version of the video and added a rendition of a Snoop Dogg song as the audio, gaining roughly 1.7 million plays and 300,300 likes in four months (shown below, right). The video ultimately led to the meme's viral spread.

Spread

On April 15th, 2023, TikToker^[3] @giliath95 posted a video that inserted the cats into a new setting, pairing them with a top caption reading, "When you randomly zoned out during a conversation and now have no idea what was said to you," additionally adding the song "aquatic ambience" by scizzie^[4] as the video's sound. Over the course of three months, the video gained roughly 4.6 million plays and 611,500 likes (shown below, left). Soon after, various TikTokers posted their own iterations. For instance, on April 18th, 2023, TikToker^[5] @justleonow posted a video referencing the Damn That's Crazy catchphrase, gaining roughly 5.8 million plays and 738,900 likes in three months (shown below, right).

The format soon surfaced on other platforms as well, such as on April 21st, 2023, when Twitter^[6] user @wolfurrizer tweeted the video with the caption, "Yo fingiendo que escucho a mi jefa tras haber dormido poco y sin café," which translated from Spanish to English, "Me pretending to listen to my boss after having little sleep and no coffee." The tweet received roughly 12,100 likes in three months (shown below).

Going into mid-2023, the format became increasingly viral on TikTok, specifically after TikToker^[7] @igreenscreenthings posted a greeenscreen template for the meme on June 28th, 2023, gaining roughly 1.4 million plays and 229,500 likes in one week (shown below, left). Thereafter, many TikTokers used the video's TikTok sound,^[8] causing it to amass over 11,500 videos in one week. The most viral usage of the greenscreen was posted by TikToker^[9] @oscarchavezneri on June 30th, 2023, gaining roughly 8.1 million plays and 588,100 likes in five days (shown below, right).