About

Gym Teacher is a series of image macros mocking the weight and overall physical fitness of public school gym teachers. The images are typically captioned with motivational statements attributed to gym teachers, followed by a picture identifying the teacher as large and obese.

Origin

On September 5th, 2018, Redditor FredChocoBear submitted a "Male Middle/High School Gym Teacher" Starter Pack image to /r/starterpacks,^[1] which included a photograph of a man exposing his belly (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post gained over 1,300 points (97% upvoted) and 90 comments.

Spread

On August 5th, 2019, Redditor ChanThe_Man posted an image macro featuring a mock quote of a gym teacher saying "I don't see you running!" followed by a picture of the Heavy Weapons Guy (shown below). Over the next two weeks, the post garnered more than 1,100 points (99% upvoted) on /r/teenagers.^[2]

On August 17th, Redditor Pl0uk submitted a meme comparing gym teachers to Running Kingpin, which received upwards of 44,100 points (97% upvoted) and 190 comments on /r/dankmemes^[4] within 48 hours (shown below, left). The following day, an image macro featuring a screen capture from the 1986 comedy action film Big Trouble in Little China reached the front page of /r/dankmemes,^[3] gaining over 41,600 points (97% upvoted) and 260 comments over the next 24 hours (shown below, right).

On August 19th, the Cheezburger site Memebase^[5] published a list highlighting notable examples of the meme, titled "Gym Teacher Memes Hilariously Expose The Hypocritical Nature Of PE Instructors."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References