Normal Pills

About

Normal Pills is a reference to the music video for the song "Mask" by Minecraft YouTuber and musician Dream in which an animated version of Dream takes pills from a bottle labeled "normal pills" in order to help him fight feelings of "abnormality" lead by ADHD. The music video was released in June 2021 and inspired numerous memes mocking the idea of normal pills in the following days and criticizing the message of the video, which ends with Dream discarding the pills after realizing he "doesn't need them" to feel "normal."

Origin

On May 21st, 2021, Dream released the song "Mask."^[1] On June 8th, he released the official music video for the song on the Dream Music YouTube^[2] channel, garnering over 3.6 million views in two days (shown below). The video is animated in a Pixar-like style of 3D animation and depicts a teenage Dream struggling with school and ADHD and being seen as an outcast, but finding comfort in wearing his signature white mask with a smile drawn on it and making content. Around timestamp 1:40 in the video, Dream sings about failing all his classes and wishing he could get past his feelings of abnormality while the animated character opens a medication bottle labeled "normal pills." At the end of the video, he throws the pills away into a trash can, realizing he doesn't need them to feel normal.

That day, Instagram^[3] user @grandmas.butt shared the "normal pills" clip from the music video on their page, simply captioning it "normal pills," garnering over 351,000 views and 63,000 likes in two days (shown below). The scene was largely mocked and joked about in the comments, many feeling its depiction of being trapped or feeling abnormal and anxious comes across corny in various ways.

In an interview with ex-Smosh co-host Anthony Padilla, Dream talks about the single and his ADHD, specifically recalling a moment where he discarded his prescribed medication like in the video.^[11] This was criticized by some as teaching a bad lesson to those taking medication, particularly children.

Spread

The clip was shared a number of times on Instagram^[4][5] over the next two days, garnering additional tens of thousands of views with each. On June 9th, Twitter and Instagram users began making memes referencing normal pills. For example, on that day, Twitter^[6] user @ASTR4N0MICALL posted a screenshot of the "normal pills" bottle captioned, "WAIT HOLD ON THE NORMAL PILLS ARENT EVEN LIKE SSRIS OR SOMETHING ITS LIKE ANTIBIOTICS 'TAKE THREE TIMES DAILY FOR 10 DAYS UNTIL ALL TAKEN' HOMEBOY YOU HAD AN INFECTION NOT DEPRESSION," garnering over 11,600 likes and 1,800 retweets in a day (shown below).

On the same day, Instagram^[7] user @alter.peego posted a meme featuring a sad SpongeBob SquarePants with top-text imagining a doctor prescribing normal pills (shown below). The post was reuploaded by Instagram^[8] user @grandmas.butt the same day, garnering over 53,900 likes in a day.

Later that day, Instagram^[9] user @pedros_friend posted an I Hate the Antichrist version of the meme, garnering over 3,500 likes in a day (shown below, left). On the same day, Twitter^[10] user @mydearvampire posted an image of a cat with the caption, "They made him take normal pills when he was 6," garnering over 11,900 likes and 1,600 retweets in a day (shown below, right).

Templates

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References