Sudden Clarity Clarence

Confirmed 738,875

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

About

Sudden Clarity Clarence is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photo of a young man at a party staring into the distance as if he is experiencing an epiphany. The captions often contain the phrase "Oh my God" or "Holy Shit" followed by a sudden realization that is trivial and insignificant. The series has been criticized for being redudant, due to its similarities to Conspiracy Keanu featuring an image of a frightened-looking Keanu Reeves.

Origin

The original stock photo (shown left) was submitted to the Australia Associated Press^[9] covering the Schoolies festival on Queensland, Australia's Gold Coast. on November 21st, 2009. On November 23rd, 2011, Redditor NorthernSkeptic submitted a post titled "Introducing Sudden Clarity Clarence"^[2] that included an image macro (shown right) with the caption "Oh my God / dubstep sucks." The thread subsequently reached the front page of the /r/AdviceAnimals subreddit.

Spread

On February 1st, 2012, the Internet humor site UpRoxx^[5] posted an article about the advice animal series with a slideshow of notable derivatives. On February 16th, Slacktory editor Nick Douglas posted an instance on his Tumblr^[4] blog with the caption "Holy shit / I've been given a lot and should be more thankful" which received over 1,700 notes in two weeks.

The meme has since spread to FunnyJunk^[6] and Tumblr^[7] under the tag "#sudden clarity clarence." The Quickmeme page has received over 3,710 submissions and a Facebook page for "Sudden Clarity Clarence" has 17 likes as of March 6th, 2012.

Notable Examples

Identity

On March 6th, 2012, Redditor duckareokay submitted a post to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[3] subreddit titled "A true moment of clarity" featuring a photograph (shown left) of a man mimicking the Suddenly Clarity Clarence with the caption "I'm a meme." Redditor Badk1d replied to the thread claiming his classmate Will G from southern California was the real Clarity Clarence and presented a photo as evidence (shown right). Neither of the students were from Australia where the original stock photo was taken.