Deep Fried Memes

About

Deep Fried Memes are a style of meme wherein an image is run through dozens of filters to the point where the image appears grainy, washed-out, and strangely colored. Often, they're applied in memes popular on Black Twitter such as Real Nigga Hours and Spell ICUP Nigga.

Origin

While the origin of the "deep fried meme" is unknown, the earliest known post to call the image type a "deep fried meme" was posted to Tumblr on March 24th, 2015 by paparoachscarsmp3^[2] (shown below).

Spread

On August 12th, 2015, a Tumblr devoted to Deep Fried Memes, deep-fried-memes,^[4] launched. Shortly after the first appearance of deep fried memes, they gained popularity when they were used during the rise of Real Nigga Hours and Smash the Like. On August 19th, 2015, the Facebook page Real Nigga Hours Who Up^[1] posted their first "deep-fried" image (shown below).

On October 6th, 2015, JesusHChristOnABike started /r/DeepFriedMemes,^[3] a subreddit devoted to posting deep fried images. The subreddit has over 9,000 subscribers as of February 16th, 2017. On November 21st, 2016, Urban Dictionary user memegod420 uploaded a definition to the site,^[5] writing, "When a high quality meme is screen shot, reposted and re-filtered so many times over that it has a yellowish, low quality resolution and looks like it was deep fried."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References