My Son Made a Gorilla From Plastic / My Son Made This With His Own Hand

Submission 2,845

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About

My Son Made a Gorilla From Plastic or My Son Made This With His Own Hand is a series of AI generated images of a child standing next to something elaborate that he made alongside a caption reading a variation on the phrasal template "My son made X out of Y" or the copypasta "My son made this with his own hand 👏." The trend began on Facebook as early as October 2023 as an example of engagement bait. In March 2024, the trend was called out on the /r/StableDiffusion subreddit, inspiring memes offering absurd variations on the trend.

Origin

While the exact origins of the trend are unclear, it dates back to as early as October 22nd, 2023, when the Facebook^[1] page Go Story posted an AI-generated image of a child holding an elaborate bird house captioned, "My son has made this with his own hand 👏 Thanks those you appreciate ❤️👍," garnering over 14,000 reactions in five months (shown below, left). This trend continued to spread on Facebook^[2]^[3] over the following months, with most examples featuring the same caption alongside a photo of a child holding something they supposedly made.

On March 8th, 2024, Facebook^[4] user Chloe Gorilla Fund posted an AI art image of a child standing next to a sculpture of a gorilla made of plastic bottles, writing, "My son made a gorilla from plastic 😮 It's a great idea 💡🦍❣️," garnering over 18,000 shares and 920,000 reactions in 10 days (shown below, right). On March 14th, Redditor u/TheNumber42Rocks posted the image to /r/StableDiffusion,^[5] writing, "How are people believing this is real?" garnering over 1,500 upvotes in four days.

Spread

The trend spread across the /r/stablediffusion subreddit and /r/midjourney subreddit over the following days as users generated parodies of the posts. For example, on March 15th, 2024, Redditor u/FightingBlaze77 posted a version of the meme referencing Team Fortress 2 to /r/StableDiffusion^[6] that gained over 900 upvotes in three days (shown below).

On the same day, a now-deleted Redditor posted a version of the meme to /r/midjourney^[7] titled "My son made a quantum computer out of peanut butter" that garnered over 1,800 upvotes in three days (shown below, left). On March 16th, u/Hot-Rise9795 posted a version of the meme to /r/midjourney^[8] that garnered over 1,500 upvotes in two days (shown below, right).

That same day, Redditor u/indorock made a post to /r/OutOfTheLoop^[9] asking for an explanation for the trend, garnering over 2,600 upvotes in two days.