I Have To X, But I Don't Want To / I'm Tired Of Being Good

Submission 3,993

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

About

I Have To X, But I Don't Want To, also known as I'm Tired Of Being Good, refers to an exploitable meme template of a guy who reveals his red eyes across two selfie photos, in reference to him being evil while seeming innocent. The original screenshot is of a Facebook post from a non-English-speaking user who captioned the two photos, "I'm tired of being good." As the post's screenshot went viral in the early 2020s, a meme creator labeled the images with text reading, "I have to clean my room / But I don't want to." Thereafter, meme creators re-edited and recaptioned the meme, forming a phrasal template of "I have to X, but I don't want to," in which the "X" was replaced with other nouns, verbs and concepts.

Origin

On May 18th, 2019, Facebook^[1] user Ricardo López Silva posted two selfies to his page that showed himself in a blue shirt, revealing that his eyes were red, and he was therefore evil, through an editing filter. Ricardo López Silva captioned the photos, "Me canse de ser bueno," which translated in English to, "I'm tired of being nice," or "I'm tired of being good." Over the course of four years, the post received roughly 15,000 reactions and 158,000 shares (shown below).

Spread

Sometime after the May 18th Facebook upload, Ricardo López Silva's post was screenshotted and put on Reddit's /r/Cringetopia^[2] by Redditor PapaCchenck^[3] (shown below). The post received an unknown amount of likes but it was reposted elsewhere soon after, like to iFunny^[4] by the user @TwoHeadedPatrick, who received over 220 smiles in four years. On May 25th, 2019, the meme was posted by Instagram^[5] user @nobita_0fisial, earning roughly 2,900 likes.

On August 27th, 2020, Tumblr^[6] user auckie posted the two images of Ricardo López Silva with text reading, "I have to clean my room / But I don't want to." The post received roughly 11,900 notes in three years (shown below, left). The post was soon exploited by various meme creators across platforms. For instance, on October 11th, 2020, Instagram^[7] user @understandingartists reposted a meme made by Instagram^[8] user @irlfunnyman12 that was directed towards internet artists that draw the same characters over and over again. The post received roughly 6,700 likes in three years (shown below, right).

Thereafter, usage of the meme became increasingly absurd. For instance, on January 25th, 2021, Twitter^[9] user @impliedwolf tweeted an iteration with text reading, "I want to make art / But I don't want to," earning roughly 177,200 likes in two years (shown below, left). On July 21st, 2021, Redditor Spitch-Spitch posted a Barotrauma iteration to /r/Barotrauma^[10] that earned over 470 upvotes in two years (shown below, right).