Childhood Is When You Idolize Batman
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About
Childhood Is When You Idolize Batman refers to a series of memes based on an image macro of comic book characters Batman and Joker captioned with the quote "Childhood is when you idolize Batman, adulthood is when you realize that the Joker makes more sense." Spawned by a viral meme about cheese being expensive in early 2020, the meme maintained its presence through the early 2020s, both as a phrasal template and a recaption format.
Origin
On May 17th, 2015, the Facebook[1] page Whiseper posted a Whisper image macro created by an unknown user captioned, "Childhood is when you idolize Batman, adulthood is when you realize that the Joker makes more sense." The post (shown below) received over 88,000 reactions and 129,000 shares in eight years.
Spread
In the following years, the Whisper image macro and multiple other macros captioned with the phrase were widely circulated online, primarily on Facebook. For example, on October 10th, 2019, the Facebook[2] page Thinking Minds made a post that received over 22,000 reactions and 3,200 shares in four years.
On July 11th, 2018, Tumblr[3] users writhenwud, w3rewolf-th3rewolf and nuttyrabid had a viral exchange about the quote that received over 62,800 reblogs and 66,000 likes in five years (shown below). Multiple reposts of the exchange went viral online in the following years.
On February 11th, 2020, Redditor Retr0_takeover posted a two-panel meme in which they recaptioned the second part of the quote to "adulthood is when you realize cheese is really expensive." The post (shown below) garnered over 96,700 upvotes in the /r/dankmemes[4] subreddit in three years. An April 21st, 2020, repost by iFunny[5] user LordBalter_2016 gained over 52,400 smiles in three years.
The recaptioned format achieved significant virality in late 2020, most notably in the /r/okbuddyretard subreddit. For example, on October 20th, 2020, Redidtor trump-is-god posted a meme that received over 6,100 upvotes in the subreddit[6] in three years (shown below, left).
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[2] Facebook – Thinking Minds
[3] Tumblr – nuttyrabbit
[4] Reddit – This says a lot about society
[5] iFunny – LordBaiter_2016
[6] Reddit – Do you know 😳
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