The Despicable Mold Spore

Submission 163

About

The Despicable Mold Spore refers to a Tumblr post humorously referencing an image of a Chatham petrel chick. In mid-2024, the image became an exploitable meme format as people redrew the small black bird in the post, and the post itself became a caption and copypasta for original drawings and other humorous images on the site, as well as a vehicle for images of cats on Twitter / X.

Origin

On an unknown date before July 18th, 2024, Tumblr user fleshdyketwo, since deactivated, made a post reading, "me: ugh why am I always coughing and sneezing when I'm in this room? and my eyes are always irritated too / the despicable mold spore:" The post featured a picture of a Chatham petrel chick that has existed online since at least 2012.^[1] The post was reblogged by user yeah-yeah-beebiss-1^[2] on July 18th and gained over 16,000 notes in roughly one month.

me: ugh why am i always coughing and sneezing when im in this room? and my eyes are always irritated too

the despicable mold spore:

Spread

The post became an exploitable and caption meme on Tumblr over the following month. For example, on July 22nd, 2024, Tumblr user sunnydayaoe^[3] posted fan art in place of the bird, gaining over 190 notes in one month.

On August 9th, Tumblr user tofusquisha^[4] posted a character they dubbed "the despicable mold spore," gaining over 150 notes in three weeks.

The caption meme was also popularized on Twitter as a vehicle for posting pictures of cats in August 2024. For example, on August 4th, Twitter user @felidfang^[5] posted the caption with a picture of a cat, gaining over 13,000 retweets and 133,000 likes in nearly one month.

The following day, Twitter user @GAlNSBOROUGH^[6] posted the meme with a different cat, gaining over 680 retweets and 3,800 likes in the same timeframe.