About

Reginald refers to an exploitable image of a Japanese spider crab paired with the text presenting the animal as "Reginald" who "is only here on alternating Tuesdays". In January 2019, posts featuring Reginald gained popularity in /r/me_irl subreddit in a similar vein to "It Is Wednesday, My Dudes" posts.

Origin

On December 23rd, 2006, Wikipedia user Lycaon uploaded a photograph^[1] of Japanese spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi) made by photographer Michael Wolf as an entry image for the article^[2] about the animal on the website.

On January 18th, 2019, Redditor^[3] sprongleed_omlet uploaded the image of the crab with a caption presenting the animal as "Reginald" who "is only here on alternating Tuesdays" to /r/surrealmemes subreddit, where it gained over 1,400 upvotes in one week (shown below). On January 22nd, 2019, Redditor^[10] WuluKin reposted the image of the crab to the /r/me_irl subreddit, where it received over 43,900 upvotes in one week.

Spread

One week later, on January 29th, 2019, Redditor^[4] Vestergaard_GOAT reposted the image, receiving over 19,400 upvotes in one day. In comments, multiple /r/me_irl subscribers pointed out that despite the claim in the image description it was posted one week ahead of the supposed schedule^[5][6][7].

On the same day, several /r/me_irl users made posts providing possible explanations for the mishap. Redditor^[8] WuluKin, the author of the original Reginald post, claimed that "Reginald has realized his mistake" and would "return again next Tuesday".

On January 30th, 2019, an unlogged Wikipedia^[9] user vandalized the entry for the Japanese spider crab on the website, adding information related to the meme to the entry description.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References