Sheldon Holding a Laptop

Submission 14,602

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About

Sheldon Holding a Laptop refers to a photo of The Big Bang Theory character Sheldon Cooper holding a laptop, about to press a key in an empty room. The meme was originally used in absurd and ironic Bazinga memes in the 2010s, spreading on 4chan, Reddit and Facebook. In 2024, the image was used in TikTok memes paired with a slowed remix the song "Candy Shop" by 50 Cent ("Yeah. Uh-huh. So seductive. I take you to the candy shop"). The memes slowly faded in from black, similar to the Duke Dennis 'Hard' Memes.

Origin

On December 31st, 2006, a stock photo of actor Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper was taken for The Big Bang Theory promo and added to the stock image website Alamy.^[1] Parsons (as Sheldon Cooper) is seen holding a black laptop while standing up, about to dramatically press a button on the keyboard (shown below).

As early as 2012, the image was used in ironic Bazinga memes posted to 4chan and elsewhere. The earliest known memes using the image were uploaded to the Know Your Meme ^[2]^[3] database on December 28th, 2012, by user Fridge (shown below). Their origin is currently unknown, however, 4chan and Tumblr are the likely sources as the trend spread on both platforms in 2011 and 2012.

Spread

Memes using the image spread across social media in the 2010s, evident in a Facebook^[4] post shared by user Ｂａｓｔｏｎａｔａの神 on August 9th, 2013 (shown below, left). Posts also surfaced in the /r/bingbongtheorem^[5] subreddit on September 17th, 2018, gaining over 370 upvotes in six years (shown below, right).

On October 18th, 2020, YouTuber^[6] Kmart {STG} posted a video called "Sheldon posts nsfw in general (Full Saga)" that used the Sheldon Holding a Laptop image with Impact captions reading, "IM GOING TO POST NSFW IN GENERAL." The videos were allegedly made by a Discord user named Blapman007#8036. Over four years, the video received roughly 11,300 views (shown below).

TikTok "Candy Shop" Memes

Memes using the Sheldon Holding a Laptop image surfaced en masse on TikTok in early 2024, predominantly using a TikTok sound^[7] that was a slowed remix of the song "Candy Shop" by rapper 50 Cent. The original video was posted by TikToker^[8] @coolgamer43w on February 14th, 2024. It slowly faded in Sheldon with an upside-down text caption, gaining over 2.5 million plays and 414,400 likes in five days (shown below, left).

Viral iterations of the meme persisted on the app, like one video posted by TikToker^[9] @7chumacherr on February 15th, 2024, joking about heart reacting everything his "bro" sends him, receiving over 6.7 million plays and 1.5 million likes in four days (shown below, right).

By February 19th, 2024, the trend's primary TikTok sound^[7] had amassed over 4,400 posts.