About

Inside You There Are Two Wolves is a catchphrase and the name of a Native American proverb, which began being parodied online in memes towards the end of 2018 and through the beginning of 2019. In the original proverb, a grandfather says there are two wolves fighting inside him, an evil one and a good one. His grandson asks, "Who will win?" The grandfather replies, "The one you feed." In parodies, the story is often simplified to the phrasal template "There are two wolves inside you. One is X. The other is X. You are X." Many of the two wolves memes use an image of one black and one white wolf staring at each other with a moon in the background to create image macros.

Origin

The proverb's origins are murky. It has been attributed to Christian pastor Billy Graham in 1978, as well as the Cherokee Native American tribe (shown below).^[1]

The most common image used in the meme is a compilation depicting a white wolf and a black wolf looking at each other set against a moon in the sky, which was created by DeviantArt^[6] user MachiavelliCro on October 29th, 2012.

The white wolf in the image comes from a photo uploaded by DeviantArt^[7] user Lakela on June 28th, 2012, while the black wolf comes from a picture posted by DeviantArt^[8] user Chocomix-Stock on July 28th, 2012.

Spread

On November 14th, 2018, Facebook user Scorty Pippin posted a parody to the Facebook page Useless, Unsuccessful, and/or Unpopular Memes.^[5] The following day, Reddit user BreadCheese reposted a parody of the proverb in /r/comedyheaven,^[3] gaining over 42,000 points (shown below, left).

On December 16th, 2018, Tumblr user unclefather^[2] posted an object labeling meme to make the punchline, "You have depression." The post gained over 121,000 notes (shown below, right).

The format continued to see use into 2019. On March 22nd, 2019, an example posted to /r/SuddenlyGay by user avib101^[4] gained over 480 points (shown below, left).

Parodies saw an uptick following the June 5th, 2019 Nintendo Direct about Pokémon Sword and Shield, which announced the two new legendary Pokémon Zacian and Zamazenta, which are both wolves. Twitter user @FizzyDog_ parodied the "You Are Gay" edit with the Pokémon, gaining over 450 retweets and 800 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References