About

Glowing Man or Glowing Guy refers to the artwork "Lone Light" by artist Quentin Deronzier. Originally posted by in October 2017 to Tumblr, in 2019 the image gained popularity as a meme.

Origin

On October 2nd, 2017, Tumblr^[1] user quentinderonzier (Quentin Deronzier) posted an artwork titled "Lone Light." The artwork depicted a glowing humanoid sitting at a table in a dim restaurant, illuminating his surroundings with his glow (shown below). The post received over 8,260 likes and reblogs in three years.

The image did not see use in memes until on February 25th, 2019, Redditor^[2] JoojToranja posted the image to /r/Bossfight subreddit, titling it "Sunman, lord of light." The post received over 27,600 upvotes in six months.

Spread

In the following days, the image received significant spread online, particularly on Reddit. On February 25th, an SCP Foundation meme was posted by Redditor^[3] MASTER-OF_MOISTURE in /r/DankMemesFromSite19 (shown below, left). On March 2nd, Redditor^[4] JesperNoob posted the earliest known edit of the image, a Minecraft Armor Parody meme that gained over 13,700 upvotes in /r/dankmemes (shown below, right).

The format gained further spread online following a viral post by Twitter user @curledbitch^[5] made on March 16th, 2019, that received over 27,700 retweets and 68,400 likes in one year (shown below, left). A June 16th, 2019, meme posted by Twitter^[6] user @BreckinMathias received over 12,300 retweets and 41,500 likes in one year (shown below, right).

On April 22nd, 2020, Twitter^[7] user @katloid posted a high-resolution version of the image, with the tweet gaining over 45,600 retweets and 230,600 likes in two days.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References