Smirking Chess Guy

About

Smirking Chess Guy refers to a reaction image and image macro meme featuring a young man wearing glasses sitting in front of a chess set with a dramatic red-and-black smokey background. The image came from an Instagram post made by a professional high school yearbook photo agency and subsequently came to be used in ironic jokes about how nerdy people must feel after making corny or unfunny comments.

Origin

On October 15th, 2024, the Instagram^[1] page @_pixel_house_ posted a video showing behind-the-scenes footage from a photo shoot with high school senior and chess player Konner Nearhood. The post gathered over 1.2 million likes and 6,000 comments in four months.

On October 17th, @_pixel_house_ posted the final results from the shoot, including the "Smirking Chess Guy" meme template.^[2]

Spread

On November 28th, 2024, Twitter / X^[3] user @mupkipo posted the earliest known use of the "Smirking Chess Guy" image as a meme about Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, writing, "joker mains after hitting fair 1 confirms," and gathering over 3,000 likes in two months.

On November 29th, the Instagram^[4] page @autistic.browniez posted a version of the meme that read, "how bro looked at me in elementary school after asking me to spell icup," gathering over 26,000 likes in two months.

On December 12th, Redditor^[5] /u/The_Red_Bread posted a version of the "Smirking Chess Guy" meme to the subreddit /r/linuxmemes, gathering over 1,000 upvotes in two months.

On December 30th, 2024, the Instagram^[6] page @oiaflol posted a version of the meme that read, "how mfs with "you're probably here because I offended you" in their bio feel," gathering over 16,000 likes in two months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References