About

Heartbroken Cowboy refers to a series of image macros featuring a screenshot of YouTuber James Ritchey in 2016 wearing a cowboy hat looking as if he's about to cry, often associated with text describing sad situations.

Origin

Sometime in 2016, YouTuber James Daniel Marrs Ritchey^[4] uploaded a video titled, "57. Current Chart – Y2016M7D24," which was deleted later that year.^[2] The Heartbroken Cowboy screenshot (shown below) is taken from a moment of the video. Allegedly, the first image macro using the screenshot was uploaded in response to Ritchey deleting the video,^[1] and read, "Heartbroken Cowboy is heartbroken" although this example has not been found and the source is likely dead.

Spread

Wordpress blog memesmyselfandi,^[3] created on an unknown date, is a blog consisting entirely of Heartbroken Cowboy memes, containing 30 as of January 2021 (examples shown below, left and right). A number of examples exist on Meme Creator, where the template is hosted.^[7]

The Heartbroken Cowboy template is available on a number of meme generators.^[5][6]

On May 28th, 2019, the subject of the meme James Ritchey posted a Hearbroken Cowboy meme to his personal blog,^[7] followed by another on June 8th (shown below, left and right).

On March 19th, 2020 Ritchey posted another image macro featuring himself, referencing the COVID-19 Pandemic, to his blog (shown below). This is the most recent Heartbroken Cowboy meme Ritchey has shared.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References