About

Jack Nicholson Thumbs-Up is a reaction image of actor Jack Nicholson taken while he was attending the third game of the NBA Playoffs between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Denver Nuggets in late May 2023. The clip and photo of him with messy hair and his thumb raised up in the air quickly became a meme due to his expression and the context of the Lakers losing that game.

Origin

On Saturday, May 20th, 2023, Jack Nicholson attended the NBA Playoff game between the Lakers and Nuggets, as is usual for him. Nicholson, a known die-hard Lakers fan, has decades of appearances at the LA basketball team's games, with various reactions coming from him throughout the years. This particular game, one that the Lakers needed to win to avoid falling into the 3-0 "pit of death," was especially important for both the team and the fans.

The moment the image used in the meme occurred when the camera operators panned over to Nicholson sitting on the sideline as they referred to him mononymously as "Jack." The instance was then noticed and posted to Twitter by the user @JimmyTraina^[1] that night (May 20th), earning over 500,000 views in three days (shown below).

Spread

As the NBA game went on and the Lakers began to lose, people online took the image of Nicholson and started to attribute it to not caring about the game itself. For example, on May 20th, 2023, Twitter user @DCI_James^[2] made one such joke using the image, receiving over 200 likes in three days (shown below, left). Others on Twitter talked about Nicholson's disheveled appearance and perceived apparent lack of care in going out to the game while looking good, with Twitter user @Superfly29tnt^[3] tweeting one such example that same day, accumulating nearly 1,400 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Others noticing Nicholson started to interpret his appearance and facial expression as him being grumpy, which led to more memes and reactions about him looking similar to Grumpy Cat or having a generally displeased-looking demeanor. On May 20th, Twitter user @Tommygreturns2^[4] posted an example of the Grumpy Cat connection, receiving over 200 likes in three days (shown below).

Various Examples

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External References