About

I Am Speed is a memorable quote from the film franchise Cars uttered by the character Lightning McQueen as a mantra to provide confidence during a race. A screencap from the film is often used as the punchline in an image macro series popularized on /r/dankmemes.

Origin

In the Cars franchise, the character Lightning McQueen often repeats the phrase "I am speed" to himself to gain confidence to compete in a race. On May 26th, 2006, Cars was released, which was promoted with an image of McQueen driving around a race track while smirking (shown below, left).

On March 18th, 2019, Redditor jeIbest submitted an image macro using the image along with a text blackout joke about peeing in the bathroom (shown below). Within 48 hours, the post gained over 26,800 points (98% upvoted) and 140 comments on /r/dankmemes.^[1]

Spread

The following day, Redditor SeriousSoldier uploaded the image with a caption about downloading games on Steam to /r/dankmemes^[2] (shown below, left). Meanwhile, Redditor Yetty_McGreedy posted a text blackout version about eating a hamster in class to /r/dankmemes^[3] (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References