Happy Birthday Memes

Submission 42,262

About

Happy Birthday Memes are image macros, animated GIFs ^[3]^[4] and other online media used to wish someone a "happy birthday".

Origin

Wishing friends or family a "Happy Birthday" is a fairly universal concept worldwide across many cultures, and Happy Birthday To You is the most sung song worldwide.^[7] IMDB has over 648 instances of Happy Birthday To You being sung in a movie or TV scene.^[8]

While the exact origin of "Happy Birthday" memes is unknown, the images bear many similarities to ecards. In December 1994, The Electric Postcard database was created by Dr. Judith Donath at the MIT Media Lab, which allowed users to create ecards with customized messages to send to a recipient's email address.

Spread

On November 17th, 2013, Redditor Tyzh submitted a photoshop of Doge resembling the character Rainbow Dash captioned with a "happy birthday" message to /r/mylittlepony^[6] (shown below).

On October 1st, 2014, YouTuber GreatBirthdayIdeas uploaded a video ecard of a dog singing the song "Happy Birthday," which gained over 4.01 million views and 160 comments over the next four years (shown below, left). On January 4th, 2015, YouTuber Juggernaut Pint uploaded another birthday video ecard featuring a dancing orangutan followed by the message "Happy Birthday" (shown below, right). Over the next several years, the video received upwards of 2.8 million views and 70 comments.

[This video has been removed]

On September 14th, 2016, Redditor ilovetheflowergirl submitted a birthday meme referencing the song "All Star" to /r/mildlyinfuriating^[5] (shown below).

On June 19th, 2018, the internet humor site Smosh^[2] highlighted a collection of birthday-related memes in a post titled "These Birthday Memes Are Something to Celebrate."

On August 18th, a listicle titled "24 Happy Birthday Memes to Share With Your Friends or Enemies" was published on Ebaumsworld.^[1]