Do You Think a Depressed Person Could Make This?

About

Do You Think a Depressed Person Could Make This? is a series of exploitable image macro memes based on a scene from season 4, episode 11 of Parks and Recreation where Ben Wyatt holds up a Claymation figurine that he created and says, "Do you think a depressed person could make this? No." The episode aired in January 2012 and began to gain viral spread online as early as 2014, inspiring memes over the following years, including redraws and Photoshops. The meme is often used to show off something of arguable merit that a person has painstakingly created.

Origin

On January 12th, 2012, season 4, episode 11 of Parks and Recreation aired on television. In one scene, Ben Wyatt, who has recently been fired from his job, shows Chris Traeger a Claymation project he's been working on. Traeger claims that Wyatt is depressed and hugs him. There is a cut to a talking head interview, where Wyatt says to the interviewer, "Do you think a depressed person could make this?" then shows a Claymation figure to the camera (shown below).

The scene was converted into an image macro several times over the following years, including by /u/TwoHeadedSnoo on June 6th, 2014 and /u/avidward94 on March 4th, 2015, who posted the image macros to /r/PandR on Reddit^[1][2] garnering over 500 and 10 upvotes respectively in nine years.

The earliest known memetic use of the scene was posted to the same community on Reddit^[3] by /u/manolis_k on February 17th, 2018 with a post titled, "When someone says I am depressed," garnering over 7,500 upvotes in six years (shown below).

Spread

The meme gained further viral spread throughout the 2020s. On April 12th, 2020, a version of the meme replacing the figurine with a screenshot of an Animal Crossing island was posted to /r/me_irl^[4] that garnered over 4,000 upvotes in four years (shown below, left). On October 1st, a version of the meme referencing the video game RuneScape was posted to /r/2007scape,^[5] garnering over 6,000 upvotes in the same span of time (shown below, right).

On January 25th, 2021, X^[6] user @justiceaudre posted a screenshot from the scene, writing, "every single day when I finish my work I think about this meme," garnering over 84,000 likes in three years (shown below). It was reposted to iFunny^[7] on January 31st, 2022, garnering over 9,000 smiles in two years.

On December 8th, 2023, X^[8] user @smol_ghosts posted a redraw of the meme referencing the show Good Omens, garnering over 2,000 likes in five months (shown below, left). On February 9th, 2024, a version of the meme referencing Stardew Valley was posted to /r/StardewValleyMemes on Reddit,^[9] garnering over 1,100 upvotes in three months (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References