Wholesome Memes are a subgenre of image macros in which creators subvert audience expectation by taking established meme templates and using them expressing supportive, caring sentiments rather than making the jokes usually associated with each template.

Precursor

The first meme to subvert the expectation of comedy with actual advice was Actual Advice Mallard, a popular Advice Animal dedicated to sharing healthy-living tips that was popular in the winter of 2013. These stood in contrast to other advice animal memes which usually offer bad or outlandish advice for humor.

While it's difficult to judge which post started the "wholesome meme" trend, one of the earliest was posted to Feminist Reddit offshoot Fempire on August 8th, 2015.^[1] It featured a photoshopped picture of Pepe the Frog smiling and wearing a construction hat. The caption reads "When bae says we need to work on our relationship." The post did not gain much traction, receiving only 21 upvotes in a year.

Wholesome memes began spreading on Tumblr in the Winter of 2016. One of the most popularly cited "wholesome memes" was posted on January 30th by user shako-makko.^[2] The post, shown below, features a picture of Pepe the Frog smiling with the caption, "when your crush posts a new picture." As of October 27th, 2016, the post has 144,433 notes.

In the coming months, more wholesome memes appeared with variations about being in love with one's girlfriend. On April 6th, 2016, dateagirlwhosuggestion^[3] posted a list of girlfriend-related image macros they'd found on Tumblr. The post gained over 75,000 notes.

Two weeks later, on April 19th, a Tumblr devoted to reposting wholesome memes called wholesomememes-archive^[4] launched. On May 10th, a Facebook page^[5] called "Wholesome Memes" followed, and gained over 44,000 likes. In the beginning of August, a Twitter account, @WholesomeMeme,^[6] launched and gained over 35,000 followers.

Around the same time, the Wholesome Meme trend began attracting media attention. On August 10th, both New York Magazine^[7] and Smosh^[8] published articles compiling and detailing wholesome memes, with both taking many examples from wholesomememes-archive.tumblr.com. Buzzfeed^[9] published a similar listicle the next day. A subreddit devoted to wholesome memes, /r/wholesomememes^[10] started in September and gained over 16,000 subscribers in one month.