Girl Crying Next to a Kissing Couple

Submission 43,996

Part of a series on Object Labeling. [View Related Entries]

About

Anime Girl Crying Next to Kissing Couple refers to several artworks depicting the described scene which have been used in memes, often in a similar way to Distracted Boyfriend memes. While an artwork by artist Gurande gaining initial popularity in memes in May 2018, a second artwork by HIIRAGIRIN5, posted in February 2019, was used in a similar fashion starting in 2019.

Origin

On June 26th, 2016, Japanese artist Gurande posted an artwork depicting a dark-haired girl crying next to wall, with a kissing couple visible behind the corner.^[1] The artwork gained over 1,500 retweets and 2,800 likes on Twitter in three years (shown below).

Starting in 2017, the artwork was used by Spanish-speaking users for object labeling memes. The earliest meme based on the image currently available online was reposted by Facebook page Mundo AniMetal on August 20, 2017 (shown below, left).^[2] On August 21st, 2017, Amino user ECCHI MAN reposted another meme based on the image (shown below, right).^[3]

Spread

On December 18th, 2017, an unknown 9GAG user reposted a version of the image labeled "Traps / Me / My Fragile Heteresexuality," with the post receiving over 400 points in two years (shown below).^[4] On December 19th, 2017, Amino user LND reposted the image, with more reposts appearing on 9GAG, Reddit, Memedroid and other websites in the following months.^[5]

On May 8th, 2018, Redditor hijklol100 posted a version of the meme which gained over 11,100 upvotes in /r/anime_irl subreddit in six months (shown below, left).^[6] Starting in late May 2018, the image gained significant popularity as an object labeling meme (examples shown below, center and right).^[7]^[8]

HIIRAGIRIN5's Version

On February 18th, 2019, Japanese artist HIIRAGIRIN5 posted an artwork depicting a similar scene, with a pink-haired girl holding a present in her arm standing behind a wall. The post gained over 2,800 retweets and 10,600 likes on Twitter^[9] and over 8,200 likes on Pixiv^[10] in nine monhts (shown below).