About

[10] Guy (also known as "Really High Guy" and "Stoner Stanley") is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photo of a young man who appears to be under the influence of marijuana. The captions typically portray stereotypical stoner behavior, similar to Stoner Dog, such as giving invalid answers to misunderstood questions and craving junk food. In April 2021, UK-based resident Connor Sinclair revealed himself to be the man depicted in 10 Guy after nearly a decade of anonymity.

Origin

On November 25th, 2011, Redditor randomdave posted a photo of a red-faced young man (below left) to the marijuana enthusiast r/trees subreddit titled "Being at a [10] is not always pretty."^[10] The same day, the picture was submitted by redditor Ahahaha__10 with the caption "Texts the person next to them / 'I want hopsital'" (below right) in a post titled "The happened to a friend of mine on his first ever bong rip."^[1]

Etymology of [10]

The name is derived from the scoring system used by members of the r/trees^[16] subreddit, also known as “ents”, that indicates the relative level of intoxication with [1] being the lowest and [10] being the highest.

Spread

Shortly after Redditor Ahahaha__10 submitted the first image macro, Redditor vivalocaaa created a Quickmeme^[3] page using the photo called "[10] Guy." On November 30th, 2011, a post^[5] titled "10 Guy ordering a cheeseburger" reached the front page of Reddit, accumulating over 3,000 up votes within 6 days.

On December 2nd, compilations of "Really High Guy" examples were posted to the Body Building^[6] forums and the Internet humor site BuzzFeed.^[7] On December 5th, a slideshow of [10] Guy image macros was posted to the media hosting site Sharenator^[8] titled "High High Schooler." On March 31st, 2012, additional photos of [10] Guy surfaced on the "Stoner Comics"^[12] Tumblr blog.

On April 6th, 2012, several examples were posted to the Internet humor site Ebaumsworld^[11] by user yzman87.

The meme continued to spread on sites like FunnyJunk^[13], Memebase^[15] and Tumblr under the tags "10 guy"^[4] and "really high guy."^[9] As of April 20th, 2012, the Quickmeme page has over 10,400 submissions and a Facebook^[14] page for "10 Guy" has 133 likes.

Identity

In early April 2021, UK-based resident Connor Sinclair revealed himself to be the man depicted in the 10 Guy meme after nearly a decade of remaining anonymous online when he created the Twitter account @10GuyOfficial. On April 11th, 2021, Sinclair then tweeted^[23] an image of himself holding up the account name on a sheet of paper, confirming his identity (seen below).

On May 6th, 2021, Sinclair uploaded a video to his YouTube^[24] channel where he spoke about his role in the meme and revealed himself as the person depicted in 10 Guy (shown below).

Notable Examples

Derivatives

[10] Keanu

The face of [10] Guy has been photoshopped into the Conspiracy Keanu template.

10 Koala

On April 29th, 2012, Redditor theofficialtevo submitted an image macro to the /r/trees^[21] subreddit, which featured [10] Guy with the caption "Dude. You're a koala" followed by a photograph of a similar-looking koala with the caption "when?" (shown below, left). Prior to being archived, the post received over 1,900 upvotes and 70 comments. On May 9th, Redditor grantly0711 submitted an image macro using the same setup to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[22] subreddit, which featured the caption "Dude. Eucalyptus. / I can lick what?" (shown below, right). The post accumulated 467 upvotes but only 7 comments before it was archived.

10 Dog

On February 1st, 2013, Redditor hairy_potter submitted an image post to the /r/funny^[17] subreddit, featuring a photograph of his dog under the influence of anesthetic after a surgery (shown below, left). The post received over 47,900 upvotes and 830 comments prior to being archived, as well as several image macros portraying the dog as a stereotypical stoner (shown below, middle), similar to the character of Stoner Dog. The same day, Redditor Kuonji submitted a post titled “10 Dog at the park” to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[18] subreddit, featuring an image macro of the dog photo with the caption “A squirrel is just / a tennis ball thrown by God” (shown below, right), which received more than 9,300 upvotes and 60 comments within the first week.

In the following days, more than 150 instances of ^[10] Dog image macros were submitted to the /r/AdviceAnimals subreddit and at least 200 instances can be found on the Quickmeme^[19] page for ^[10] Dog. On February 5th, UpRoxx^[20] published a slideshow post featuring notable examples from the series.

Search Interest

Search query volume for "10 guy" rose in November of 2011, the same month the images began circulating on Reddit.

External References