Endless Cycle / I Meet Someone

Submission 34,107

Part of a series on Exploitables. [View Related Entries]

About

Endless Cycle, also known as Cycle of Life and I Meet Someone is an exploitable featuring an image macro showing the cycle of unrequited romances in one's life. While the original image, entitled "Recap of My Life" achieved viral success, a variation in which people replace the "I Get Attached" section with humorous variations grew in popularity in March 2020.

Origin

On November 19th, 2018, Twitter ^[6] user @xbabylon tweeted a text version of the image that would become the meme featuring the text: "Recap of my life: I meet someone ----> we talk ----> get attached ----> they leave." The tweet received more than 75,000 likes and 24,000 retweets in less than two years (shown below).

On January 3rd, 2019, Instagram ^[1] user @memes posted the earliest available version of the image, which is titled "Recap of my life." The post received more than 107,000 likes as of March 2020.

Spread

Days later, Redditor ^[2] playgames2k19 shared the image on the /r/funny subreddit, where it received more than 175 points (88% upvoted) as of March 2020.

Throughout 2019, people online continued to meme the image. For example, on April 24th, DeviantArt ^[3] user francy-is-the-best shared a variation with a facepalm emoji in the center that they "found on Instgram" (shown below, left).

On June 11th, Instagram^[4] user @sweetserialpisces shared a version of the image with the caption "Pisces cycle of life." The post received more than 8,000 likes in less than one year (shown below, center).

In March 2020, the meme and its variations went viral. On March 4th, 2020, Instagram^[5] user @trashcanpaul shared a variation in which the third step reads "It becomes apparent that I committed several war crimes in the former Yugoslavia." The post received more than 26,000 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).