Black Circle Dog / Blackhole Ben

About

Blackhole Ben, commonly known as Black Hole Dog and Black Circle Dog, refers to a viral photograph of a black dog sitting in a perfect circle. Posted in May 2018, the image has been used as an exploitable and an image caption format.

Origin

On May 2nd, 2018, Redditor 19ROYGBIV posted a photograph of a black Schipperke dog sitting in a perfect circle to the /r/photoshopbattles^[1] subreddit, initiating a Photoshop battle. The post gained gained over 30,500 upvotes in five years (shown below).

In the following days, multiple Redditors posted their submissions for the battle (examples shown below). For example, Redditor^[2] indefinitexcess posted an edit that received over 2,500 upvotes in five years (shown below, center).

Spread

On May 3rd, 2018, Twitter^[3] user @JohnRHealey posted the photograph, where it accumulated over 4,900 retweets and 25,000 likes in five years. On May 4th, the owner of the dog launched Instagram account @blackhole_ben,^[4] posting more images of the dog.

On June 8th, 2018, Twitter^[4] user @somesillywowzer tweeted a black hole joke based on the photograph, copying an earlier, now-deleted, post by @pet_tempa. The post (shown below) gained over 10,700 retweets and 41,900 likes in five years.

On January 13th, 2023, Tumblr^[5] account picsthatmakeyougohmm shared the image. On February 12th, 2023, Tumblr^[6] user reticent-artificer replied with an edit in which the dog was blasting off like a space rocket (shown below), with the exchange garnering over 49,000 likes and reblogs in five months.

On April 18th, 2018, Twitter^[7] user @Kekcrocs reposted the original image and the edit, gaining over 13,500 retweets and 76,000 likes in three months. In the following months, the edit achieved significant popularity as source material for caption memes.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References