Penguin and Goth Girl

About

Penguin and Goth Girl, also known as The Girl I Pulled By Being Goofy, refers to an anime-esque seemingly AI-generated image of a penguin with cat ears and a tall girl dressed in all black, similar to the Goth GF archetype, in a grocery store aisle. The image became popular on Instagram in late 2024 and continued to gain iterations on Reddit in early 2025. It is frequently used in object-labeling memes. The format's name stems from a catchphrase used in the original iteration that riffs on the "Me And The Bad Bitch I Pulled By Being X" phrasal template.

Origin

The original image was posted by Twitter / X ^[1] user @bflyzone_ on August 21st, 2024. The image is seemingly AI-generated and shows a penguin and a tall girl, resembling a goth, in a supermarket aisle. The post received over 5,000 views and 160 likes in four months (shown below). The tweet has since been deleted but it was added to archive.ph^[6] in December 2024.

On August 29th, Instagram^[2] user @alchemitsu uploaded the image with object-labeled captions reading, "The girl I pulled by being goofy," and "Me (I'm autistic)," gaining over 5,000 likes in three months (shown below).

Spread

On September 18th, 2024, Instagram^[3] user @churrozard1__ posted a Reel of the still image with Yeat's song "If We Being Real" playing over it with the caption, "Me looking at Pokémon Cards." This post received over 396,000 likes in three months (shown below).

On November 27th, Instagram^[4] user @souls_world posted an edited version of the image saying, "Me telling her the lore of Elden Ring," receiving over 26,000 likes in a week and over 54,100 likes in four months (shown below).

This image was later reposted by Redditor^[5] Cultural_Car_4195 to r/Animememes on December 2nd, receiving over 11,000 upvotes in a day and over 18,000 in three months. Viral Reddit^[8] posts using the template continued in the following days.

The template spread en masse on Reddit heading into early 2025. For instance, on February 14th, 2025, Redditor^[9] MahmoudAO shared an iteration to /r/memes, object labeling the characters, "She's talking about how she loves to travel every month," and, "Me and my 2 dollars." Over three weeks, the post gained over 11,000 upvotes (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References