About

Kids Scared of Rabbit, also known as Children Scared of Rabbit, is an exploitable object-labeling image macro featuring a young girl and boy who are both cowering in fear from a small black rabbit sitting next to a bucket, with the boy more visibly afraid than the girl. The picture has been used as a meme since one of the children's parents brought it to the attention of meme communities in 2015. Since then, the format is mainly used to show groups of people who are afraid, usually of something that seems relatively benign.

Origin

The photo was taken in early 2015 by Camera Shy, a professional photography service based in Utah that specializes in family portraits. The image first appeared online when Camera Shy posted it to their Facebook^[1] page on March 14th, 2015, with the caption "And sometimes bunny sessions go like this…" (shown below, left).

On March 16th, Imgur^[2] user RockiesInOctober posted the photo with the caption, "My kids during our family pictures this past weekend." Later that day, they linked that image to the Reddit community /r/photoshopbattles.^[3] As of 2021, the post received more than 3,000 upvotes, and multiple users created altered versions of the image in the following years (examples seen below, center and right).

Spread

The most upvoted image from the original /r/photoshopbattles thread, posted on March 16th, 2021, referred to the Killer Rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is frequently cited in relation to the meme format.

The earliest recorded example of the image being used for object-labeling was a Tumblr^[4] post by user footnotestoplato from January 2017, alluding to the philosophy of Albert Camus. The post received more than 250 notes in roughly four years.

On October 13th, 2020, Redditor u/mijuzz7 uploaded an example of the meme about video games to /r/memes^[5] (shown below). The image received over 85,000 upvotes in 10 months. Since then, many examples of the meme have labeled the boy and girl as "Psychopaths" and "Serial killers," respectively.

Sneaking Tiger

In August 2020, a variation of the meme appeared online from a now-deleted source, featuring a tiger hiding in the grass photoshopped behind the children. The format is used to illustrate when fear is being misplaced and the true threat is being ignored in favor of something less scary. The earliest example of the meme still available online was posted to Reddit^[6] by u/thegododoctor on August 15th, 2020, referring to the 2020 season of the reality show Big Brother (seen below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References