About

Sleep Servers, also known as Nap Servers, Dream Servers or The Sleep Servers Are Full, refers to an internet slang term and joke that imagines that when people can't fall asleep, it's because the "sleep servers," which function like a video game or internet server, have too many users already logged in. The joke seemingly originates from a 2018 Tumblr post on a Shower Thoughts blog. The joke spread in memes on Twitter / X and Reddit heading into the 2020s, resurfacing en masse in 2025 when TikTok users posted numerous skits about the sleep servers being full.

Origin

On September 18th, 2018, the Tumblr^[1] blog just-shower-thoughts shared a text post that read, "When you can't fall asleep it's because all the dream servers are full and you have to wait for someone else to disconnect first," gaining over 3,800 notes in seven years (shown below). The post is currently the first known form of the Sleep Servers joke.

Spread

On March 10th, 2019, iFunny ^[2] user @TagMstr posted a screenshot of a since-deleted tweet from @hitsbluntgram, which copied the contents of the abovementioned Tumblr post. The iFunny post received over 49,600 smiles in six years (shown below).

On December 23rd, 2019, X^[3] user @wtfSlayy (formerly @EvadeSlayer) tweeted the same joke but replaced "dream" with "sleep," reading, "What if when we can’t sleep it's because the sleep servers are full and spots only open when other people wake up."

In the replies to @wtfSlayy's tweet, X^[4] user @ITrxgI claimed that the joke was from a TikTok (unconfirmed).

A screenshot of @wtfSlayy's tweet (shown below) was reposted on the /r/me_irl ^[5][6] subreddit and later spread on iFunny.^[7]

On January 29th, 2021, a *Hits Blunt* meme was posted to the /r/BrandNewSentence^[8] subreddit, which used the Sleep Servers Are Full caption, gaining over 19,000 upvotes in four years (shown below).

Heading into the 2020s, the Sleep Servers Are Full joke continued to gain viral copycat posts on TikTok.^[9][10]

On June 22nd, 2025, TikToker^[11] @masxd_07 posted a video in which he orated the joke, receiving over 1.1 million likes in 19 days (shown below).

On June 28th, TikToker^[12] @1xstone posted a video in which he joked about the Sleep Servers being full and pleaded with people to leave so he could join and fall asleep. He also asked if anyone had a "private server." Over 13 days, the video received over 989,900 likes (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References