IRL Loading Screens

Submission 1,938

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

About

IRL Loading Screens, also known as Real-Life Loading Screen Tips, is a meme format that involves editing loading screens from various games with images and humorous tips that apply to real life, applying video game logic to real-world things in a way similar to humor found on the /r/outside subreddit and TierZoo YouTube channel. The format was popularized by the Facebook gimmick page IRL Loading Screens and its sister pages on other social media.

Origin

On June 29th, 2021, Redditor PeterPorky launched the Facebook^[1] page IRL Loading Game Screens, subreddit /r/IRL_Loading_Screens^[2] and Instagram^[3] page irl_loading_screens.

On the same day, the Facebook^[4] page posted its first meme, a photograph of an abandoned Blockbuster rental store edited to look like an The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion loading screen, which was captioned with a joke about finding ancient ruins (shown below, left). The page posted^[5]^[6] seven more similar memes on the same day (two examples shown below, left and right).

Spread

On July 24th, 2022, the Facebook^[7] page made the earliest post to gain over 100 reactions, an Oblivion loading screen edit that garnered over 160 reactions and 210 shares in two years (shown below, left). On August 27th, 2022, the page posted a meme that received over 270 reactions and 80 shares on Facebook^[8] in two years (shown below, right).

In addition to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the meme page edited and parodied loading screens from other games, including Fallout 4, the Animal Crossing series, Call of Duty series, Dark Souls series and others (examples shown below).

In August 2022, PeterPorky launched the X^[9] / Twitter page @IRLoadingScreen. The page achieved popularity in March 2024, as several memes posted on it went viral on X^[10]^[11] (examples shown below).

As of March 20th, 2024, IRL Loading Screens had over 45,000 followers on Facebook, 14,000 followers on X / Twitter, 1,800 followers on Reddit and 1,000 followers on Instagram.