About

Napoleo is an image macro and forced meme depicting French military officer Napoleon Bonaparte next to a misspelled version of his name reading, "Napoleo." In late October 2023, X / Twitter user @Azuricringel made a post claiming to have dreamt up the meme. A year later, YouTuber Matt Rose then encouraged his followers to spread the meme, and a week later, he posted a video reacting to the inorganic growth of the format as it began spreading as a forced meme.

Origin

On October 20th, 2023, X^[1] user @Azuricringel posted an image of Napoleon standing beside a misspelling of his name, spelled, "Napoleo." The post reads, "Had a dream where this became a super popular meme and I laughed myself awake so I tried to recreate it," garnering around 20 likes in a year.

A year later, on October 21st, 2024, X^[2] user and YouTuber @rose_matt reposted the meme, writing, "I require help again please over next couple days! You need not know why but for next week's video I need this image shared as if it's a meme you're familiar with. If you wanna help I'm after screenshots of threads, convos etc where you've dropped Napoleo casually in. THANKS🙌," garnering over 500 likes in a week.

Spread

Over the next few days in late October 2024, numerous X users shared screenshots in the comments section of @rose_matt's post showing them sharing the meme with people (see "Various Examples" section below).

On October 28th, 2024, Matt Rose posted a video to YouTube^[3] titled, "People Laughing in their Sleep at Dreams," garnering over 41,000 views in under two hours. At the 5:51-minute mark, Rose displays a selection of the forced memes about Napoleo.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References