About

Glen Powell Capybara Face, also known as Glen Powell Smile, is a photograph and reaction image of actor Glen Powell smiling in a tuxedo at a red carpet event, looking directly into the camera. The photo was taken in 2016 and was notably used for Powell's Wikipedia page. In early 2023, the photo was then used in image caption memes on Twitter, paired with various captions that likened his expression to a nonhuman, such as one that called him a "capybara who made a wish to become human."

Origin

On December 10th, 2016, a photograph was taken of actor Glen Powell on the red carpet for the global celebration of the film Hidden Figures at the SVA Theatre in New York, NY.^[1] The photo was first uploaded to Flickr^[1] (shown below, left). A cropped version of the photograph was later used for Powell's Wikipedia^[2] page (shown below, right).

The first-known memetic usage of the photo was posted several years later, on April 28th, 2023, by Twitter^[3] user @MissGioBaby1, who captioned it, "Me next in line at the dispensary trying to act normal:" and gained roughly 18,800 likes in one month (shown below).

Spread

Other Twitter users started to use the image soon after. For instance, a few hours later on April 28th, 2023, Twitter^[4] user @andrewlowe captioned the image, "he looks like a parking meter I wanna put a quarter in his mouth," gaining roughly 89,800 likes in one month (shown below, left). On April 29th, Twitter^[5] user @koalarolls quote retweeted @MissGioBaby1, writing, "he looks like a capybara who made a wish to become human," gaining roughly 267,000 likes in one month (shown below, right).

Twitter user @koalarolls' QRT was then screenshotted and reposted across social media. For instance, it gained roughly 12,000 smiles when iFunnier^[6] @SemiAnon reposted it on May 3rd. Going into June 2023, the image was continuously used in viral tweets. For instance, on June 6th, 2023, Twitter^[7] user @zuza_real tweeted, "training my face to make this expression 24/7 regardless of my mental state," gaining roughly 31,300 likes in one day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References