Homesick For A Place I'm Not Even Sure Exists

About

Homesick For A Place I'm Not Even Sure Exists is a catchphrase and image combination that came about online in early 2017. A revitalization in 2019 then helped the phrase become an image macro meme in which people put it on top of other images, as well as turned the original image into an exploitable environment format. Though popularized within the vaporwave community, the general sentiment expressed within the meme series notably found itself a footing within nostalgia-posting in the early 2020s.

Origin

On February 21st, 2017, a now-deleted Reddit account uploaded the first instance of the phrase and image combination, working off the plain image itself that was uploaded to Tumblr^[1] earlier in the month. The catchphrase was placed on top of an image of an astronaut in a field with a pink filter placed over everything and a simulated VHS pause-menu overlay, with the phrase being added in post (shown below).

Phrase Origin

On February 6th, 2014, the Twitter account @foxydemocrat^[2] uploaded the exact phrase that would later go on to inspire the series of memes in the mid-to-late 2010s and early 2020s, stating that she wrote it on her Tumblr in 2012, though the exact link to the page was deleted within the massive post deletion the site had after its acquisition by Verizon in late 2018 (shown below).

Spread

On March 4th, 2019, the Twitter account @AntigenApparel^[3] uploaded a similarly edited image with a Roman legionnaire soldier being in an African plains bush area, looking up at a starry night sky with the same VHS overlays being displayed. The tweet itself was captioned as standard nostalgia-posting, but with a twist of not knowing the original feeling in the first place (shown below).

On October 22nd, 2020, Funnyjunk user thevioletlightning^[4] uploaded an edited version in which they swapped out the nostalgia-posting aspect with Guy Fieri and his quest for flavor, stating that he was craving for a flavor he's not even sure exists (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References