Losing My Religion

About

Losing My Religion is a '90s rock song by the musical group R.E.M., which has gone on to become part of a phrasal template and musical reference in various parodies and memes throughout the 2010s and 2020s. Due to the somber tone of the song, the phrase "that's me in the corner" as well as "losing my religion" have seen usage separately and together in memes, as well as having slight changes made to the phrase as a punchline.

Origin

The song, which came out in 1991, is often cited as one of the band's most well-known and popular songs, with memes being made of "Losing My Religion" as a way to reference the recognizable track. One of the first memes made about the song was uploaded to Imgur on December 18th, 2015, by the user deanismyfutureexhusband,^[1] where it earned over 58,000 views in eight years for a musical pun reference that used the original lyrics as a snowclone (shown below).

Spread

The song continued to receive references in the form of memes shortly after the 2015 pun, with Twitter user @nycsouthpaw^[2] uploading the song lyrics as a caption over a now-deleted photo of Chris Christie's Face on March 1st, 2016, receiving over 4,000 likes in seven years and helping the phrase spread in its original state (shown below).

On November 23rd, 2022, a now-deleted Redditor^[3] uploaded a They Don't Know meme using the phrase to the /r/memes subreddit (shown below), earning over 5,100 upvotes in four months, with the Wojak being noticeably under a spotlight (another lyric from the song commonly referenced in memes).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References