About

Confused Mr. Krabs refers to a reaction image of the SpongeBob SquarePants character Mr. Krabs with a confused expression as the world around him spins. The image is popular as a companion to jokes that indicate the poster is confused.

Origin

On February 24th, 2001, the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Patty Hype" premiered in the United States. In the episode, Mr. Krabs is surrounded by a mob of angry residents after they experienced unintentional side effects of SpongeBob's invention. As of March 2016, there is no true clip of this episode available online.

On January 31st, 2016, Twitter user isthatahmed tweeted an image from the episode with added motion blur and the caption "When you just wake up from a nap and your parents already yelling at you". By March 9th, 2016, the tweet had received 6,352 retweets and 7,370 likes.^[2]

Spread

On February 2nd, the popular Twitter content aggregator WORlDSTARHIPHOP,^[3] which imitates the website WorldStarHipHop and collects tweets that it retweets as its own, recreated the isthatahmed tweet, which received over 1,600 retweets and 2,700 likes.

Soon after, several other notable Twitter accounts posted the images with different jokes; for instance, on February 3rd, the account freddyamazin posted a version of the meme that received over 2,600 retweets and 6,200 likes (below left).^[4]

Screenshots of mutations on this theme remained popular well into March, when posts on the /r/blackpeopletwitter subreddit with the image became common; several popular examples earned well over 1000 points. The most popular, by user justgoblaze, earned 3,969 points (90% upvoted) in less than 24 hours after its initial posting (below right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References