Henlo

About

Henlo refers to a series of images in which animals are looking at a computer and apparently getting cyberbullied by a person who starts their message with "henlo (animal)." The message that the animal is reading is a snowclone that changes depending on the animal, and the chats are generally written in doggo -like slang.

Origin

The original image features a lizard reading a Steam chat in a which a user named 1 rooting tooting motherfucker writes "henlo lizer. helllo you STINKY LIZARD. go eat a fly ugly" (shown below).

While the exact date of when the image was first posted online is unknown, the picture, its September 26th, 2016 Sizzle^[1] post, and the comments in 1 rooting tooting motherfucker's profile^[2] indicate it was posted between September 19th and September 26th, 2016.

Spread

In the coming month, the image spread via Instagram^[3] and Facebook meme pages.^[4] By late November, variations using different animals began appearing with the text on the screen tailored to that specific animal. The first known variation was posted by Facebook page Where My Shrimp^[8] on October 19th, 2016, and featured a lobster.

On November 22nd, 2016, Facebook page Dinkleburg^[5] posted a variation that included a dog. On December 6th, HotForKevinJames posted the image to /r/dankmemes^[6] adding the caption "Just walked in on my son to see him being bullied online.." (shown below).

Following the Reddit post, several other variations appeared using different animals such as a bird and a rabbit. On January 5th, 2017, molliuniverse^[7] posted a question to /r/OutoftheLoop asking about the origin of the "Henlo" meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References