Close Your Eyes, Bro

About

Close Your Eyes, Bro refers to a series of wholesome image macros depicting one character telling another to close their eyes, after which they say they can't see anything. The first speaker then says, "That's my world without you, bro." The original version was posted to Reddit in 2018, resulting in a number of new variations over the course of the next three years applying the same or similar phrasing to different characters.

Origin

On July 11th, 2018, Redditor u/AngelAssassin19 posted to /r/DetroitBecomeHuman,^[1] the subreddit for video game Detroit: Become Human, with a multi-panel image macro featuring an interaction between the characters Simon and Markus. In the comic, Markus tells Simon, "close ur eyes bro," and Simon answers, "ok bro" and does so. Markus then asks, "wat u see bro," followed by Simon saying, "nothin bro," and Markus replying, "that's my world without you bro," ending with Simon looking affectionately and saying, "bro…" (shown below). The post gained over 990 upvotes in three years and is the earliest known version of the meme.

On August 3rd, Redditor u/IIsIsaIsaaIsaac reposted the meme to /r/gaming,^[4] garnering over 10,300 upvotes in a comparable span of time.

Spread

Within a month the meme inspired a number of variations, applying the same or very similar phrasing to different characters from different properties. Two of the earliest examples were uploaded to Facebook^[2] page "CR7 – The Legend" and Instagram^[3] page @aamhimemekar on August 6th and 7th, 2018, garnering over 1,700 reactions and 200 shares on the former and 3,000 likes on the latter in three years (shown below, left and right respectively).

On September 3rd, Instagram^[5] user @ompb posted a version of the meme using their parrots, garnering over 7,900 likes in roughly three years (shown below). On October 21st, Facebook^[6] page "Funny Texts" reposted the image, garnering over 29,000 reactions and 82,000 shares in a comparable span of time.

On December 25th, Redditor u/LoosyEU posted a comic to /r/wholesomememes^[7] about a man asking for a woman's hand in marriage following the format of the meme, garnering over 2,000 upvotes in just under three years (shown below).

The meme then saw another spike in popularity in mid-to-late 2019. For example, on December 10th, 2019, Redditor u/monkeymind1144 posted a version of the meme to /r/wholesomememes^[8] using screenshots from The Mandalorian featuring Baby Yoda, garnering over 24,000 upvotes in roughly two years (shown below). That day the meme was reposted to Instagram^[9] by @memezar, garnering over 506,000 likes in the same span of time.

The meme has continued to inspire new variants two years later across social media platforms. For example, on February 21st, 2021, Redditor u/Royalty513 posted a Jujutsu Kaisen meme tp /r/JuJutsuKaisen^[10] using the format, garnering over 8,000 upvotes in three months (shown below, left). On April 29th, u/SLakshmi357 posted a Genshin Impact themed version of the meme to /r/Genshin_Memepact,^[11] garnering over 10,000 upvotes in six days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References