I Love Seeing People Smile at Their Phones in Public

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Part of a series on Adam Ellis. [View Related Entries]

About

I Love Seeing People Smile at Their Phones in Public is a series of four-panel exploitables based on a webcomic by Adam Ellis. In the comic, a girl sits on the train looking at her phone. Above, a text narration tells us that the narrator "loves when they catch people smiling at their phones in public." At the end of the comic, it is revealed that the girl is looking at shipping are of the video game characters Sonic the Hedgehog and Knuckles. Online, people replace the image of Sonic and Knuckles with other absurd images.

Origin

On January 20th, 2018, webcomics artist Adam Ellis published a four-panel comic of a girl on a train looking her phone on Patreon (shown below).^[1] As the text reveals, the comic's narrator loves "seeing people smile at their phones in public." As the comic becomes more sentimental in text, the comic shows the girl crying, before revealing, in the final panel, what she has been looking at: a picture of Sonic the Hedgehog and Knuckles kissing. When posted to Facebook ^[2] several days later, the comic received more than 19,000 reactions, 4,100 shares and 1,500 comments in less than 24 hours. When posted to Instagram, ^[6] the comic received more than 190,000 likes in 24 hours.

Spread

The first known instance of the comic being used as a meme occured on January 23rd by Redditor ^[3] Rowneycoot, who posted a variation in the /r/dankmemes subreddit. In this version, the girl is looking a text message from "Bae" that says, "Wanna come over? I got Wrestlemania XXV on a DVD And a six pack of Pepsi Max." The post (shown below, left) received more than 230 points (84% upvoted) and 10 comments in 24 hours.

Additionally, that day, Redditor^[4] ElHijodePutaMadre posted the original comic in the /r/MemeEconomy subreddit, receiving more than 580 points (96% upvoted) and 20 comments in 24 hours. Others within the thread posted several variations, including one of "Spider-Man Ass Slap"/memes/spider-man-ass-slap (shown below, center).

That day, Imgur ^[5] user LiquidMountain posted a version where the woman is looking at the emergency alert from Hawaii Missile False Alarm. The post (shown below, right) received more than 4,200 points and 234,000 views in 24 hours.