Is It Really Possible for an Emo Girl and a Country Boy to Be in a Relationship?

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About

Is It Really Possible for an Emo Girl and a Country Boy to Be in a Relationship? refers to a Whisper image macro of a cowboy captioned with the question, which inspired a snowclone meme format via caption changing. In the format, "emo girl" and "country boy" are replaced with people from two different fandoms or groups.

Origin

On March 7th, 2015, an unknown Whisper^[1] user posted an image macro of a man in a cowboy hat captioned, "Is it really possible for a emo girl and a country boy to be in a relationship?" (shown below). The post received one like and two replies.

The image did not see any spread until March 2019 when an unidentified user shared a cropped version of the macro online, launching its viral spread. On March 23rd, 2019, Instagram^[2] user grubburd made the earliest found repost of the image, with the post gaining 66 likes in three years.

Spread

In 2019, the image was widely circulated online through reposts on Reddit,^[3] Facebook,^[4] Twitter^[5] and other platforms. For example, a December 25th, 2019, repost of the macro on Twitter^[5] by user @PuccaNoodles gained over 130 retweets and 1,200 likes in two years.

Prior to April 3rd, 2019, an unknown user posted the earliest known meme based on the image, recaptioning it, "Is it really possible for a emo girl and a country boy to construct a dyson sphere." On April 3rd, Redditor^[6] Lemonesy made the earliest found repost of the edit, with the meme gaining 24 upvotes in the /r/me_irl subreddit.

The snowclone format first gained significant spread between April-June 2020 when several high engagement edits of the macro went viral on social media (examples shown below).^[7]^[8]^[9] On June 15th, 2020, Twitter^[10] account @reactjpg archived the image.

On April 18th, 2021, Twitter^[11] user @bigpenisman3000 reposted the image macro, with the post gaining over 9,700 retweets and 95,500 likes in eight months. An August 11th, 2021, repost by Tumblr^[12] user foolsdieonfriday accumulated over 95,100 likes and reblogs in five months.

Prior to December 2021, several viral versions of the format appeared on Twitter, Instagram and Reddit. The format achieved major virality after December 26th, 2021, when Twitter^[13] user @SCMTChile posted a meme about the Danganronpa and Persona series that gained over 4,000 retweets and 27,500 likes in two weeks (shown below).

In late December 2021 and early January 2022, the format saw major popularity online, primarily on Twitter.