God, Please Norway

Submission 27,876

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

About

God, Please Norway refers to a four-panel image series depicting a doctor holding a newborn baby with a discontent look on their face, as if already regretting being born. The image first became the subject of memes on Twitter in 2018, seeing a resurgence in April 2021 as an exploitable format imagining the baby regretting being born in various places.

Origin

On June 5th, 2018, Twitter^[1] user @kaymafale posted a series of four combined images showing a doctor holding up a particularly large newborn baby with a disappointed look on its face, writing, "The kid looks like he regrets being born already" (shown below). The post gained over 10,200 likes and 17,200 retweets in roughly three years and is the earliest known upload of the image.

On the same day, Redditor u/VdZLucas7x posted the same image to /r/funny^[2] titled, "Ah ok, reincarnated again in this shit," garnering over 12,800 upvotes in the same span of time.

Spread

2018 Saudi Twitter Trend

In November 2018, the image saw considerable use on Saudi Twitter^[3] in jokes about Arab fathers naming their children after their paternal grandfathers, leaving some Arabs with old, unpopular names. At the same time, the image was also used in posts joking about being reincarnated into a less-than-ideal situation (example shown below, translated by Google Translate).

On November 20th, Step Feed^[4] posted a collection of the best of these memes.

On April 5th, 2021, Imgur^[5] user OhioSucks posted a photoshopped version of the image in which the first panel is replaced by a baby in the womb wishing to be born in Norway. The next panel shows the baby asking where they've been born, followed by the doctor saying "Ohio," much to the baby's displeasure (shown below). The image gained over 1,900 points and 84,000 views in a week and is the earliest known version of this variant.

That day, Instagram^[6] meme page @shitheadsteve posted the meme, garnering over 280,700 likes in a week and greatly helping spread the meme.

On the same day, Redditor u/notgordonbombay posted a new photoshop to /r/dankmemes^[7] replacing "Ohio" with "Wyoming" and the three dots in the last panel with a Press X To Doubt image, garnering over 14,700 upvotes in a week (shown below, left). On April 6th, Redditor u/Foqus_2 posted a new photoshop to /r/shitpost^[8] in which the baby is born in Norway and smiles, garnering over 4,400 upvotes in six days (shown below, right).

On April 11th, Redditor u/ThatOneMysteriousGuy posted a new version of the meme to /r/dankmemes^[9] in which the baby is born in Sweden, garnering over 45,000 upvotes in two days (shown below).

Over the next few days, the meme was photoshopped to represent a wide variety of places, many of these posted to Instagram^[10]^[11] and garnering considerable interaction (examples shown below, left and right).