About

"He Will Never Have a Girlfriend" (alt: "She Will Never Have a Boyfriend") is a series of multi-pane rage comics featuring Cereal Guy's reaction to pre-fame and post-fame comparison photographs of well-known celebrities. In 2019, the format resurged on /r/okbuddyretard subreddit as an ironic meme.

Origin

The first instance of the image macro^[1] was posted by Reddit user hannahisapalindrome depicting two photos of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, one at the young age and another one at the older age, on February 8th, 2011. The comics typically use the structure of Cereal Guy's reaction to the pre-fame or childhood photograph of a celebrity, followed by Cereal Guy's "food-spitting" reaction to the glamorous photograph of the same celebrity. Prior to this series, unflattering "before-and-after" comparisons of celebrity photographs have been explored on the Korean web in the early 2000s, largely driven by the growth of anti-fan communities.

Spread

The single topic blog He Will Never Have a Girlfriend^[4] was created on February 25th, 2011. Similar compilations of "He Will Never Have a Girlfriend" pictures have been posted on numerous internet humor sites like Memebase^[6], Smosh^[3] and Urlesque,^[2] as well as on Tumblr^[8] and Facebook.^[7]

2019 Ironic Resurgence

In 2019, the format regained popularity as an ironic meme. On January 17th, 2019, Redditor^[9] WheresMyhMuneh reposted a four-panel "He Will Never Have a Girlfriend" meme made by an unknown author captioned "He Will Never Ballin" to /r/okbuddyretard subreddit. The post gained over 4,300 upvotes in 11 days. A repost^[10] to /r/comedyheaven subreddit received over 13,600 upvotes in nine days.

In the following weeks, more ironic versions of the format were posted by /r/okbuddyretard users. Ironic Cereal Guy edits also appeared as a part of this trend.

On January 23rd, 2019, PewDiePie reviewed several ironic "He Will Never Have a Girlfriend" memes in his Meme Review video.

Notable Examples

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Search Interest

According to Google Insights, search queries for the phrase "he will never have a girlfriend" yielded a sharp rise beginning in early February 2011. The meme has also led to a rise in the popularity of its parent meme, Cereal Guy:

External References