Being Happy vs. Fitting Into Society

About

Being Happy vs. Fitting Into Society or Ser Feliz vs. Encajar En La Sociedad in Spanish, is an exploitable meme format that uses two images to compare being happy to fitting into society, the former image being something joyful and exuberant and the latter image being something more simple and casual. The format was popularized among Spanish web users in 2022, beginning with comparisons between fun and casual backpacks. It became increasingly popular among English web users over the following years.

Origin

On December 25th, 2016, an image was posted to me.me^[1] as a demotivational phrase captioned, "finjo ser feliz pero estoy bastante triste… un like para los que son tristes y fingen ser felices para encajar en la sociedad," which translates to, "
"I pretend to be happy but I'm quite sad… a like for those who are sad and pretend to be happy to fit in with society."

In February 2022, a comparison meme format playing off a similar idea was popularized among Spanish-speaking web users. The earliest known, available example was posted by X^[2] user @Nayci16 on February 18th, 2022, comparing a Sonic the Hedgehog backpack to a plain, black backpack, garnering over 48,000 likes in two years (shown below).

Spread

The meme became increasingly popular over the following years across sites including X, Instagram and Facebook. On September 8th, 2023, Instagram^[3] user 00piumunderground posted a version of the meme comparing a Playboi Carti backpack to a black backpack, garnering over 22,000 likes in nine months (shown below, left). On January 29th, 2024, Facebook^[4] page Anime Stoppage posted a version of the meme that gained over 65,000 reactions and 5,500 shares in five months (shown below, right).

On April 9th, Instagram^[5] user extrashortdokkan posted a version of the meme that gained over 12,000 likes in two months (shown below). On June 6th, X^[6] user @hourly_shitpost reposted the original Sonic backpack meme that gained over 7,100 likes in under a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References