About

Motion Blur is a photographic technique and that involves capturing an image of a rapidly moving object at a low shutter speed, which results in the appearance of streaks or smudges around the object and its path of movement. In digital photography, the phenomenon is typically applied to images using special effect filters in post-production. Online, motion blur has been used in various reaction images and image macros to convey a sense of urgency, confusion or chaos, depending on the angle and shape of the streaks or smudges.

Origin

In digital image-editing, the usage of motion blur as a special effect became widespread with the introduction of advanced filter settings in Adobe Photoshop CS, which was released for Mac OS X and Windows in October 2003.

In the context of meme culture, motion and radial blur filters has been applied to a number of notable image macros and reaction images since as early as 2004, beginning with a derivative instance of the IGN Reaction Guys meme.

Spread

On December 27th, 2012, an image macro featuring the Gorilla Munch cereal mascot with the caption “Rustling Intensifies” was posted to the /tv/ (Television & Film) board on 4chan in response to the television crime drama series The Wire being called “a cop show.”

On May 13th, 2013, Tumblr user maohshounen posted and edited version of a skeleton rocking chair with a red filter and glowing eyes with the description “ah yes my throne." The earliest example of the association between the image and the Evanescence lyrics was posted to 4chan’s /v/ (video games) board on February 11th, 2014.

On April 28th, 2014, an anonymous 4chan user posted a motion-blurred variation of Pepe the Frog to the /r9k/ (ROBOT9001) board, which soon became known as Angry Pepe.

On January 31st, 2016, Twitter user isthatahmed tweeted the manipulated image accompanied by “When you just wake up from a nap and your parents already yelling at you”; as of March 9th, 2016, the tweet received 6,352 retweets and 7,370 likes.

On April 25th, 2016, Redditor Venomyze submitted a four-pane comic in which a son rushes to a computer to Google search the query “how to make my wiener fuckign huge” after his mother leaves the house to “run some erands” (shown below).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References