About

Excited Katie Bouman is a photoshop meme based on a photograph of computer scientist Katie Bouman seated in front of an image of the Powehi black hole, which typically superimposes various video games, websites or other humorous content on her laptop screen.

Origin

In the project to create the first image of a black hole, Katie Bouman led one of the four teams responsible for writing the imaging software. On April 10th, 2019, Bouman uploaded^[1] a photograph of herself sitting in front of a laptop with the image of the black hole on her computer screen (shown below).

Spread

On April 10th, 2019, Redditor iKojan tweeted a photograph of Dr. Katie Bouman, identifying her as "the computer scientist behind the first ever image of a black-hole." Within 48 hours, the post gathered upwards of 195,800 points (86% upvoted) and 6,200 comments on /r/pics.^[2]

That day, Redditor GrumpyWendigo posted the photo to /r/photoshopbattles,^[3] where numerous edited examples were submitted in the comments. On April 12th, Redditor DankMemesKing777 posted an edited version of the photo with Minecraft on her computer screen to /r/dankmemes,^[4] where it gained over 54,200 points (93% upvoted) and 560 comments.

On April 13th, Redditor Larssmaller posted an edit showing a Tinder match screen with Bouman and Ricardo Milos (shown below, left). On April 14th, Redditor DarkFab posted an animated edit of the image, showing a rapid slideshow of stills from the film Shrek displayed on her computer screen (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post garnered upwards of 44,900 points (95% upvoted) on /r/dankmemes.^[5]

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References