Me Showing Clear Symptoms Of Being X

Submission 6,767

Part of a series on Are Ya Winning, Son?. [View Related Entries]

About

Me Showing Clear Symptoms Of Being X is an exploitable meme and phrasal template that builds on the Are Ya Winning, Son? format where a stick figure mom or dad enters their child's room to accuse them of something like being lazy or being on drugs only for their child to instead show "clear symptoms" of being something else that humorously contradicts the parent's judgment. The original meme was shared on Twitter in early 2021 and spread over the following year.

Origin

On April 14th, 2021, Twitter^[1] user slumbersadness posted a tweet (since-deleted) that attached an image of a remixed Are Ya Winning, Son? template where a mom character enters her child's room, yelling at them to "stop being lazy." Meanwhile, the child is laying on their back on the floor, crying while the text is written above them stating, "me showing clear symptoms of mental illness" (shown below, left). The tweet received an unknown amount of likes, however, on April 14th, the Instagram ^[2] account vuittonings reposted a screenshot, earning roughly 115,200 likes in 13 months (shown below, right).

Spread

On April 14th, 2021, multiple Twitter users made their own versions of slumbersadness's meme, recaptioning the text and adding new object labels. For instance, on April 14th, Twitter^[1] user schadnfr replaced the word "mom" to read "me," earning roughly 8,100 likes in 13 months (shown below, left). Twitter^[3] user Gogolondrino also made a remix on April 14th, replacing what the mom was yelling to read, "stop showing clear symptoms of mental illness." It earned roughly 5,700 likes in 13 months (shown below, right).

On April 16th, 2021, the Instagram^[4] account sephirothtits posted a version that replaced what the mom was yelling to read, "you're on drugs," and what was written over the child to read, "me showing clear signs of wanting a pepsi," earning roughly 4,400 likes in 13 months (shown below, left). From this iteration and the ones prior, the template continued to trend on Instagram where it received the most amount of re-edits.

However, it trended on other platforms too like Reddit ^[5] and Tumblr, ^[6] among others, becoming increasing over-exploited over time. Creators started to insert other image macros to reference other memes. For instance, on September 12th, 2021, the Facebook ^[7] page Rappers In Peculiar Places posted a version that referenced the Gorilla In A Fucking Coupe meme, earning roughly 5,900 reactions in eight months (shown below, right).