About

I Need You refers to a cursed image of a creepy, uncanny face that only has eyes and teeth with a bottom caption reading, "I need you," resembling a creepypasta character. The source image is a white man's face that was crudely distorted and edited by the creator. The I Need You meme was created by Twitter / X user ghost_fur (@furghost1) in mid-October 2024, who recreated what they saw in a nightmare that made them cry, akin to other memes from dreams. After the original viral tweet, users on X and other social media platforms spread the I Need You image and made fan art of the character. Some created videos that made the character talk or move around. The I Need You guy was also compared to This Man from the Ever Dream This Man? meme.

Origin

On October 11th, 2024, X^[1] user @furghost1 tweeted, "I had a nightmare that made me start crying, this is my recreation," attaching an image of a crudely edited white man, only seen with green eyes and teeth, with a bottom caption reading, "I need you." Over three days, the tweet received roughly 88,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

In the following days, many on X quote retweeted the original tweet, adding memes and fan art of the I Need You character. For instance, on October 12th, 2024, X^[2] user @seph_fr shared the first known instance of fan art, gaining over 210 likes in two days (shown below).

A few hours later on October 12th, X^[3] user @WhostheotherMES shared a video recreation of the I Need You character, gaining over 40,000 likes in two days (shown below).

Also on October 12th, 2024, a 4chan user shared the image to /x/^[6] and claimed, "I used to have a recurring dream with this weird face, and it freaked me out. Then I saw this post, and apparently, a lot of people have seen this face in their dreams." The post received numerous replies in the following days (shown below).

On October 13th, X^[4] user @Izzzybopz tweeted drawings of Lightning McQueen and Mater from the Cars film franchise, showing Lightning McQueen saying, "Hey Mater! It's nice to finally be back in Radiator Springs" and Mater responding, "I need you," with the creepy character's face. In a day, the post received roughly 67,000 likes (shown below).

The meme spread elsewhere on social media during the same timeframe. For instance, on October 13th, YouTuber^[5] vibingleaf shared a video that used the I Need You meme, amassing over 54,000 views and 6,100 likes in a day (shown below).

On October 13th, 2024, X^[7] user @Nerd_ula shared fan art of the I Need You character and This Man from the Ever Dream This Man? meme. In a day, the post received roughly 5,200 likes (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References