About

How I Sleep refers to a series of memes which humorously describe a person's reaction to certain knowledge, usually either by depicting someone sleeping peacefully or, on the contrary, being unable to sleep. The snowclone is usually worded as How I Sleep Knowing or How I Sleep at Night Knowing and shares certain similarities with Who Asked / Nobody Asked meme.

Origin

The exact origin of the meme is unconfirmed. The original image macro, an image of a sleeping baby captioned "How I sleep knowing that I'm single and nobody cheating on me" was circulated online at least since December 2014. The earliest found reposts of the image were a meme collection posted on stelladimokokorkus.com^[1] on December 13th, 2014, and in a post by Twitter^[2] user @MilianiVelez made on December 18th (image shown below).

Spread

The original image macro was widely circulated online in 2015. For example, on March 17th and 18th that year, Twitter^[3][4] accounts @FunnyQuotees and @StumblerVideos reposted the macro, with the posts gaining 230 and 390 retweets in five years, respectively. An April 28th repost by Twitter^[5] user @miilk received over 750 retweets in the same period.

Starting in early 2016, users recreated the image with their own photographs while keeping the caption. For example, on January 2nd, 2016, Twitter^[6] user @Nazaninkavari made the earliest viral post recreating the meme (shown below, left). On August 29th, 2016, Twitter^[7] user @Drewphillips__ posted the earliest found derivative of the meme in which the caption was altered (shown below, right). The post received over 720 retweets and 2,100 likes in four years.

Starting in mid-2016, the meme format gained notable popularity on Twitter, with users posting photographs of people sleeping accompanied with various captions utilizing the snowclone (examples shown below). For example, an October 12th, 2016, Twitter user @marthamondays made a post that received over 1,300 retweets and 1,200 likes in four years. A post made by social media personality Nathan Zed on November 23rd, 2016, received over 4,400 retweets and 8,600 likes in the same period.

In the following years, the format mutated to also include memes in which the photographs of people lying awake at night (such as MC Ride Lying in Bed) have also been used, while the meme gradually evolved into a more ironic format.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References