Unsettled Tom

About

Unsettled Tom, also known as Traumatized Tom and Concerned Tom, refers to a Paint drawing of character Tom from cartoon series Tom and Jerry wearing an expression of concern. Originating from a Tails Gets Trolled comic and circulated as a reaction image on 4chan, in March 2019 the picture gained popularity on Reddit, often used in reference to shocking behavior.

Origin

On May 10th, 2012, DeviantArt^[1] user lazerbot uploaded a comic titled "Fuds Choice 8" as a part of their Tails Gets Trolled comic series. In one panel of the comic, character Tom, originally from Tom and Jerry cartoon series, shows a stressed expression.

Starting in January 2013, the panel with cropped-out text was circulated on 4chan as a reaction image. On January 9, 2013, an anonymous 4chan user made the earliest known post^[2] containing the image on /co/ board (shown below).

Spread

On March 3rd, 2019, Redditor^[3] inactive_meme posted the image paired with a caption to /r/dankmemes subreddit (shown below, left). The post gained 70 upvotes in nine days. On the same day, inactive_meme made another post^[4] using the format which gained over 20,300 upvotes in nine days (shown below, right).

Starting March, 7th, 2019, the format gained significant popularity in /r/dankmemes subreddit, with a large number of posts created in the subreddit within a 48 hour period (shown below, left). For example, a post made by Redditor staticdanger on March 7th, 2019,^[5] gained over 16,100 upvotes in five days. Another post,^[6] created by Redditor whaman273 on the same day, received over 24,5 upvotes in the same period.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References