About

Sword and Cigarette Combo is a first-person POV meme and photograph of a man wearing fingerless gloves and wielding a cigarette in his left hand and a sword in his right hand, standing outside on the street. The photo was posted by X / Twitter user @elijahmalecki in late May 2024 with the caption, "just woke up, what’s the move," inspiring memes including redraws and image macros over the following weeks. In September 2024, a 3D animated filter based on the meme was created and gained popularity.

Origin

On May 29th, 2024, X^[1] user @elijahmalecki posted a photograph taken from his perspective in which he wields a sword in his right hand and holds a lit cigarette in his left hand, writing, "just woke up, what’s the move," garnering over 354,000 likes and 40,000 reposts in two weeks (shown below). The sword appears to be a replica of Andúril, the sword used by Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings franchise.

Spread

The image became the subject of memes over the following weeks. On May 30th, 2024, X^[2] user @fromshadows posted a Photoshop edit replacing the sword with another black-colored sword (specifically Gambol Shroud, the signature weapon of Blake Belladonna from the anime series RWBY), garnering over 1,000 likes in two weeks (shown below, left). On the same day, Instagram^[3] user nukelanta posted an image macro using the image, garnering over 7,000 likes in the same span of time (shown below, right).

On June 2nd, Tumblr^[4] user livingdeadfairy reposted the photo with the same caption as the original X post, garnering over 18,000 notes in a week. On June 6th, Redditor u/Jamminmb posted a meme to /r/memes^[5] using the image, garnering over 2,200 upvotes in five days (shown below).

Sword and Cigarette Filter

On September 8th, 2024, 3D artist and TikTok user @digital_burial posted a 3D animation based on the Sword and Cigarette photograph. The video (shown below) garnered over one million views and 204,000 likes on TikTok^[6] in nine months.

On September 9th, TikToker^[7] @digital_burial posted a green-screen version of the video, adding it as an effect,^[8] titled "HellYeah" on September 14th. The video then saw spread as part of the Hell Yeah Simulator meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References