Expanding Pupil

Submission 23,891

About

Expanding Pupil is a multi-pane image macro series captioned with the claim that pupils can dilate up to 55% while looking at an object of affection, followed by a series of images in which a pupil expands or contracts in reaction to various humorous photographs.

Origin

On March 24th, 2013, the pop culture blog TheBerry^[5] posted a collection of images, which included a close-up photograph of an eye captioned with the claim that pupils "can expand as much as 45% while looking at someone you love" (shown below, left).On October 11th, 2014, Twitter user @NathanZed^[6] posted a similar factoid juxtaposed with a photograph of a man with rainbow-colored hair and a photoshopped contracted pupil (shown below, right). Over the next three years, the tweet gained over 2,400 likes and 1,000 retweets.

Spread

On November 29th, 2015, FunnyJunk^[7] user beams submitted an image of an eye with a Australian flag reflection in it dilating in response to a photograph of Fairy Bread (shown below).

On April 17th, 2016, the @hoegivesnofucks^[2] Instagram feed posted a variation in which an pupil dilates in response to a photograph of avocados (shown below, left). Within one year, the post gained over 6,700 likes and 3,900 comments. The following day, the Ginger the Chicken Facebook^[3] page posted an Expanding Pupil image with a picture of the character Ginger from the film Chicken Run (shown below, right).

On April 30th, the Bill Nye Tho Facebook page posted an image of a pupil expanding in response to seeing the Star Wars logo (shown below, left). On July 30th, the @FunnyPicsDepot^[8] Twitter feed posted a series of images in which a pupil dilates after looking at Harambe the Gorilla (shown below, right). Over the next eight months, the tweet received more than 1,800 likes and 830 retweets.

On September 5th, the Smoke Memes Everyday Facebook^[4] page posted an image in which Donald Trump's pupils expand after seeing a brick wall (shown below, left). On September 16th, the George Lucas Eating Alone at a Food Court-core Facebook^[1] page posted a version of the image in which film director George Lucas' pupils dilate while looking at a green screen (shown below, right).