Pain / How Do You Manage Pain?

About

Pain, also known as How Do You Manage Pain, refers to a series of exploitable image macros and reaction images with the caption "Pain" placed over the top of a photo. The images associated with the theme typically evoke feelings of sadness or loneliness, and also make use of fake tweets reading "pain" superimposed over the top of them, as well as the phrases, "How do you manage pain?" and "Pain. Just Lots Of Pain. Smiling Through It All."

Origin

Though the series of memes trended in August 2020, particularly on Twitter, various images associated with dealing with "pain" have been around since at least 2017. This particular series that includes a survey superimposed over an image with the question "How do you manage pain?" began appearing as early as 2019, though the exact first is unknown. One of the earliest examples was posted on September 23rd, 2019, by Redditor TrifKeske to the /r/2meirl4meirl^[1] (seen below). The meme, which includes an image of Venom Snake from Metal Gear, received 334 upvotes and 25 comments in six months.

Spread

On October 2nd, 2019, Redditor BigShaggyus posted another example to the /r/dankmemes^[2] subreddit (shown below, left), receiving over 31,700 upvotes and 173 comments in six months. On January 29th, 2020, Twitter^[3] user Ultra15151 tweeted a series of memes including the caption "Pain. Just Lots Of Pain. Smiling Through It All," receiving over 7,200 likes, 1,700 retweets and 228 replies in nine months (shown below, right). The meme was also reposted to iFunny^[4] on February 2nd, where it received over 310 likes.

On April 4th, 2020, Redditor ArjunK2111 posted a variant to the /r/dankmemes^[5] sub of Stephen A. Smith superimposed with a fake Twitter post reading "Pain," receiving over 18,100 upvotes and 62 comments in six months (seen below, left). On May 4th, Twitter^[6] user MightyKeef then reposted the image of Smith without the top text, receiving over 2,700 likes and 320 retweets in roughly five months (seen below, right).

On July 10th, 2020, Twitter^[7] user ken_glc tweeted an photoshop of Sad Will Smith with a superimposed fake tweet reading "pain" that gained over 10,000 likes and 2,000 retweets in roughly three months (shown below).^[1] The image was reposted several times after this, receiving thousands of likes on Twitter.^[8][9]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References