About

Awkward White People Smile, also known as How White People Smile at You When You Pass Them on the Street, refers to a class picture of a young white boy who is pursing his lips. The image has been widely spread as a reaction image describing how white people smile in uncomfortable situations but has seen other uses over the course of several years. The boy in the photograph is Serbian content creator David Vujanić, nicknamed VUJ.

Origin

On December 11th, 2014, Serbian content creator David Vujanić, aka VUJ,^[1][2] posted an old middle-school photo to his Instagram^[3] page, captioning it, "#ThrowBackThursday on the way to phuck yo bIsh! TYBG" garnering around 2,000 likes in 10 years.

On October 2nd, 2015, Twitter user @rashadpls^[4] tweeted an image of a white boy with pursed lips with the caption, "this how white people smile at you when you pass them on the street," gaining over 8,200 retweets and 8,900 likes (shown below).

Spread

The image spread in similar variations over the following years, appearing on sites like Reddit and Tumblr. For example, on January 2nd, 2016, a repost of the meme by a Redditor to the subreddit /r/meirl^[5] received over 170 upvotes in nine years. On October 14th, 2015, Tumblr user lucifurby^[6] gained over 580,000 notes in a similar timeframe for their repost.

While most reposts of the image used a "white people passing you on the street" caption or similar variations, other popular posts with the face include an October 25th, 2018, Imgur post by user cachem0n3y that gained over 106,000 views and 2,100 upvotes in six years (shown below).

A Don't Say It meme posted to Reddit on November 15th by Redditor BestVayneEU then gained over 6,000 upvotes and 50 comments in six years (shown below).

2024 Dogeday Photograph / Identity

On November 2nd, 2024, content creator David Vujanić (Vuj) posted a photograph of himself to Instagram^[7] and X^[8] in which he is seen posing with Kyle Craven of the Bad Luck Brian meme and Blake Boston of Scumbag Steve at the Dogeday 2024 event, garnering over 11,000 likes on the former and 2,000 on the latter in four days. In the photo, Vuj holds a phone displaying his meme.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References