Strongest Man vs. Weakest Man

About

Strongest Man vs. Weakest Man refers to a series of memes which depict very robust or very feeble men and is used as ironic praise or insult towards a country or a group. The format is closely associated with Balkan Memes and gained popularity in August and September 2020.

Origin

The exact origin of the meme is currently unconfirmed. The earliest discovered repost of the original meme, an already viral photograph of a muscular man drinking milk captioned "Weakest Man in Bulgaria," was posted by iFunny^[1] user CykaVonBlyat on August 11th, 2020 (shown below).

Spread

On August 15th, 2020, Facebook^[2] page Epic memes for edgy depressed teens posted the earliest derivative meme within the format, a photograph of another muscular man captioned "This is the weakest man in Albania" (shown below), with the meme not gaining significant traction.

The format did not see viral spread until on August 25th, 2020, iFunny user Alexi reposted the original meme, with the post gaining over 1,000 smiles in one month. In the following weeks, the post was reposted online multiple times, with notable posts on Reddit^[3] and Instagram.^[4][5]

Following the viral spread of the original post, the format gained moderate popularity online, with viral posts on Facebook,^[6] Instagram^[7] and Reddit.^[8] A subformat comparing which compared "weakest" man in one country against "strongest" man in another country also saw use.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References