About

Matthew McConaughey Smoking, also known as Rust Cohle Smoking, is an image macro series featuring the character Rust Cohle (portrayed by actor Matthew McConaughey) from the American mystery-thriller television series True Detective aggressively inhaling smoking from a cigarette. Online, the image has been used as a reaction image to express great tension or worry.

Origin

On February 9th, 2014, HBO aired the fourth episode of True Detective entitled "Who Goes There." In the episode, the character Rust Cohle goes undercover and takes cocaine to maintain the disguise. After taking the drugs, he takes a pull from his cigarette.^[1]

On January 9th, 2016, YouTuber Ακάλυπτος Ανδρέας posted the clip of the scene. The post received more than 186,000 views in less than five years (shown below).

Spread

The following year, on April 12th, 2015, Twitter ^[2] user @rustcohle95 shared a screenshot of the image with the caption, "Trying to resist watching the leaked Game of Thrones episodes like" (shown below, left).

On April 16th, 2017, Redditor ^[3] Redhead_exterminator shared a post from 4chan in which the image reacts to the text "MOAB has 15 year shelf life / 20 produced in 03. Expire in 18 / Trump has 1 year to use them all." The post received more than 8,800 points (92% upvoted) and 145 comments in less than three years (shown below, center).

Over the next few years, the meme continued to experience wide-spread usage as a reaction. For example, on November 21st, 2019, Redditor^[4] lacanderson shared an edited version in which the McConaughey has a phone in his hand and the caption reads, "The guy who killed Epstein looking at all the #epsteindidntkillhimself memes." The post received more than 2,100 points (98% upvoted) in less than six months (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References