Smug Goat

Submission 27,923

Part of a series on Animals. [View Related Entries]

About

Smug Goat is a reaction image macro featuring a baby goat with its head cocked back making it appear as though it is proud of itself. Memes using the format typically feature between one and four images of goats making similar head gestures and express self-satisfaction.

Origin

The earliest known photograph of the Smug Goat was published by Tumblr ^[1] user the-goat-barn, who published an image entitled "GUYS MOOSE IS TRYING TO BE LIKE SASSY GOAT." Within six years, the image received more than 950 notes (shown below, left).

The other photographs in this series are a number of stock photographs by photographer Carola Schubbel, which were likely published between 2014 and 2015 (shown below).^[2]^[3]

Spread

Months after the original Tumblr post, some began meme-ing the image of Moose. On March 25th, 2015, a Deal With It variation of the image appeared on GIPHY ^[4] (shown below, left).

The image appeared on Twitter ^[5] months later, on May 5th, 2015, in a post by @EverythingGoats that received more than 21,000 retweets and 21,000 likes in less than five years (shown below, center).

On June 6th, Tumblr^[6] user babygoatsandfriends posted the first known image of the two images together in a four-panel post that received more than 23,000 notes in less than five years (shown below, right).

The following year, the image by Schubbel became the inspiration for a photoshop battle. On January 28th, 2016, Redditor ^[7] Minifig81 posted the image in /r/photoshopbattles. The post received more than 12,000 points (92% upvoted) and 570 comments (examples below).

On October 26th, 2016, Twitter^[8] account @GrungeHQ posted an image of the four images together with the caption, "Them: You're wrong, it's not true Me: It's a fact, look it up Them: My bad, you're right Me." The post, which is watermarked and likely created by the now-defunct account @anxiety.is.bae, received more than 1,400 likes and 1,200 retweets in less than four years (shown below, left).

The following year, the four-panel variation appeared on the /r/funny subreddit,^[9] when a post entitled "When teacher uses my name as good example" received more than 15,000 points (93% upvoted) and 175 comments in less than three years (shown below, center).

On February 3rd, 2020, the image again appeared on Reddit^[10] with the caption "When you finally kill the boss at 3am and you hear your parents clapping from their room." The post received more than 51,000 points (94% upvoted) and 215 comments in less than two days (shown below, right).