I'm Tired, Boss

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About

I'm Tired, Boss or Estoy Cansado Jefe in Spanish is a line said by the character John Coffey from the 1999 movie Green Mile as he confesses that he is tired of living and wishes for his life to end. In 2018, an image from the scene captioned with the line gained virality as a reaction image on the VK social network, gaining global prevalence in August 2021.

Origin

On December 10th, 1999, the epic fantasy drama film The Green Mile, based on a novel of the same name, premiered.^[1] In one scene of the film, the character John Coffey (portrayed by Michael Clarke Duncan), sentenced to death, reveals to protagonist Paul Edgecomb, death row cellblock supervisor, that he is tired of living and wishes to die (scene shown below).

I'm tired, boss. Tired of bein' on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. Tired of not ever having me a buddy to be with, or tell me where we's coming from or going to, or why. Mostly I'm tired of people being ugly to each other.

The scene first spawned a meme format on the Russian social media network VK in 2018, with memes based on it appearing in VK^[2] meme community MDK and others (examples shown below). On June 8th, 2018, Memepedia reported on the spread of the meme among Russian-speaking users.

"Translation: When You've Been Drinking All Night But Your Friend Pours You Another One" / "Back From School? Don't Take Off Your Coat, Go Pick Up Some Bread" / "When They Ask You To Work Overtime"

On July 30th, 2021, Redditor duckduckbananas posted the earliest English version of the meme in the /r/memes^[3] subreddit, where it gained over 42,200 upvotes in one year (shown below).

Spread

In early August 2021, the format achieved virality on Reddit, primarily in the /r/memes subreddit. For example, on August 1st, 2021, Redditor zyl15 posted a meme about the PlayStation 5 that gained over 40,900 upvotes in the subreddit^[4] in one year (shown below, left). A same-day repost by iFunny^[5] user ItsMichal gained over 72,200 smiles in the same period. On August 10th, Redditor^[6] Tommieboi123 posted a meme that gained over 15,600 upvotes in one year (shown below, right).

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The format saw continuous use online throughout late 2021 and 2022. For example, on October 23rd, 2021, Redditormr_chair_sniffer posted a meme about Valve that gained over 8,800 upvotes in /r/Gamingcirclejerk^[7] in nine months (shown below, left), with a same-day iFunny^[8] reupload accumulating over 16,900 smiles. On June 30th, 2022, Twitter^[9] user @DeMickyD posted a The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind meme that gained over 490 retweets and 6,100 likes in one month.

In July 2022, the reaction image saw a surge in popularity on Twitter.

Estoy Casando Jeje TikTok Audio

Estoy Cansado Jefe refers to a memorable quote in Spanish from Michael Clarke Duncan's character, John Coffey. The dubbed version of the quote became a viral TikTok sound around July 2023, being mostly used to show an old object or item "thoughts" that should be put to rest. For example, on July 30th, TikToker^[10] @ivanca59apodaca posted a video (shown below) of an old and rusted jeans paired with the quote from the movie. The video garnered over 12 million plays and 1.9 million likes in two weeks. On July 27th, TikToker^[11] @111numb uploaded a video showing his almost broken sandwich maker. The post (shown below, right) garnered more than 8 million plays and 1.1 million likes in two weeks.