I'm Horny / I Meant I'm Hungry

Submission 20,367

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

About

"I'm Horny. I Mean I'm Hungry" refers to a catchphrase taken from a fan art webcomic about a conversation between two people where one of them says "I'm horny" instead of "hungry." The captions used in the original meme were then adapted and referenced in other webcomics elsewhere online across a wide array of social media platforms.

Origin

The exact first comic that's used in the meme is still unknown, but the earliest appearance online was uploaded on July 7th, 2017, by Pixiv^[1] user なっく, who posted it to "THE IDOLM@STER" fan art compilation. The original comic depicts a producer driving a car with fictional character Uzuki Shimamura in the passenger seat. The post received more than 16,800 likes and 16,400 bookmarks (shown below).

The original dialogue was:

Uzuki: "I want to kiss [producer]"
Producer: "Idol can't kiss producer."

On June 29th, 2020, Facebook^[2] page "Uzuki's ganbarimasu" reposted the image with the captions changed to "I'm Horny. Sorry, I meant I'm Hungry." The post received more than 3,200 reactions and 5,000 shares (seen below). It was then reposted again by Facebook^[3] page SauceWeebmin. The next day, the image spread to other platforms such as 9GAG^[4] and several Twitter^[5]^[6]^[7] users.

Spread

Starting in July 2020, the image was used as a reference to create other variations of fan arts. For example, on July 13th, 2020, Twitter^[8] user @PArisetya uploaded Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou (English: Girls Last Tour) by using なっく's fan art, and the tweet received more than 1,100 retweets and 4,600 likes (shown below).

On the same day, Facebook^[9] user Hill Lathif uploaded Hibike! Euphonium fan art referencing the original meme (shown below).