About

Drowning High Five refers to a comic by Russian artist Gudim showing a hand reaching out of water, evidently belonging to a drowning person. Another hand comes in and gives the drowning hand a high five. The comic has been used as a reaction image and object labeling exploitable.

Origin

On June 19th, 2017, artist Gudim posted the drowning comic to their Instagram page,^[1] where it gained over 43,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

The comic first began spreading as a reaction image, paired with captions where one celebrates the failure of others. For example, On February 26th, 2018, Facebook page Sarcasm Society^[2] posted the image with the caption "When your ex drowning," gaining over 5,500 likes and reactions (shown below, left). A July 10th, 2017 post on /r/2meirl4meirl gained over 770 points (shown below, right).

Later variations turned the image into an object labeling exploitable. For example, Redditor CorporalChipmunk posted an edit on January 9th, 2019 to /r/programmerhumor that gained over 34,000 points (shown below, left). A post by user OfficialHerst to /r/2meirl4meirl from December 26th, 2018 gained over 30,000 points (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References