About

Smooth Yoda refers to photoshops of the character Yoda from the Star Wars films in which he is edited such that his wrinkles are removed. After appearing on Tumblr in late 2017, the characters saw further use on social media in the summer of 2018.

Origin

On November 30th, 2017, Tumblr user dan-mcneely posted a photoshopped image macro of Yoda photoshopped such that the character was smooth.^[1] The post gained over 14,000 notes (shown below, left). User 5u5^[2] posted a separate "Smooth Yoda" picture that day, gaining over 66,000 notes (shown below, right).

Spread

In reblogs of these posts, Tumblr users created additional "Smooth Yodas" (examples shown below).

On December 1st, Buzzfeed reporter Ryan Broderick posted a compilation of Smooth Yoda screenshots to Twitter, gaining 12 retweets and 65 likes (shown below).

Smooth Yoda posts did not regain popularity until several months later. In July of 2018, popular posts on Reddit and Twitter revived the character. On July 2nd, a Smooth Yoda was posted to /r/sequelmemes^[3] by user Garrick17, gaining over 19,000 points. The same day, Twitter user @enfysnestt posted the same image, gaining over 16,000 retweets and 67,000 likes (shown below). Over the course of the following several days, Smooth Yoda posts continues appearing on Twitter and Reddit.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References