Paracetamol

About

Paracetamol is an over-the-counter drug that relieves pain. The Paracetamol meme refers to a WhatsApp screenshot of messages with a doctor who has poor handwriting and states that a scribble is supposed to say "Paracetamol." The meme became common on TikTok in Nothinglikeyallcore slideshows in late 2023, associated with the I'm Nothing Like Y'all meme. The trend involved a series of increasingly avant-garde re-edits and redraws of the original Paracetamol meme, leading to obscure exploitation. The re-edits were put into slideshows by creators with Hood Irony sounds predominantly from a TikToker named @illegalbugtrader.

Origin

The earliest known version of the Paracetamol meme was posted by a since-deleted Twitter / X user named @redgermz sometime before April 27th, 2019, as is evident in replies on X^[1] to his post. The earliest known repost of the meme was uploaded by the Facebook^[2] page The Humorists on April 27th, 2019, which received roughly 17,000 reactions in four years. The original tweet read, "Saw this on Facebook and sent it to my brother, who is a pharmacist," and showed a text message conversation that resulted in the answer "Paracetamol" (shown below).

Spread

Going into 2019, the original Paracetamol meme gained copycats from various accounts that re-used the image of the poorly-written "Paracetamol." For instance, an early copycat was posted by Instagram^[3] user @_pperawatpintarindonesiaa_ and it was a WhatsApp screenshot (shown below, left). The post gained over 400 likes in four years. In 2021, a similar iteration surfaced, posted by the Facebook^[4] page Tintu-Mon on July 26th, 2021, gaining roughly 109,000 reactions in two years (shown below, right).

Both of the WhatsApp iterations would later become associated with the Paracetamol meme on TikTok which trended in late 2023 alongside the "I'm Nothing Like Y'all" meme. The trend involved meme creators posting increasingly absurd and over-edited versions of the Paracetamol meme in photo slideshows.

Currently, the first known Paracetamol slideshow on TikTok was posted by TikToker^[5] @jaxsandy02 on September 8th, 2023. The slideshow included 12 increasingly-edited iterations of the WhatsApp Paracetamol meme (shown below). Over two months, the slideshow gained roughly 1.4 million plays and 219,100 likes.

Going into October 2023, similar Paracetamol memes surfaced in slideshows associated with the growing Nothinglikeyallcore niche, evident in the hashtag #nothinglikeyallcore on TikTok.^[6]

For instance, on October 25th, 2023, TikToker^[7] @feberiner posted an "I'm Nothing Like Y'all" slideshow with a version that added Paracetamol (shown below, left), gaining roughly 2 million plays and 357,900 likes in one week. On October 30th, TikToker^[8] @soomlarr posted a similar slideshow with a seemingly AI-generated meme about Paracetamol (shown below, right), gaining roughly 517,200 plays and 80,800 likes in two days.

During the same timeframe, video iterations of the Paracetamol meme also surfaced on TikTok.^[9]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References