About

Screaming Lion vs. Chill Monkey refers to an exploitable image macro meme featuring a roaring lioness facing off against a smiling chimpanzee with his hand on his chin. The image was first used in sincere boomer memes before being used to joke about maintaining your composure in the face of someone freaking out. The format is similar to the Small Brain Man Screaming at Big Brain Man meme, with the most viral versions of the image using some variation of the phrase, "How it feels to rage bait someone."

Origin

The image of the roaring lion facing off against a relaxed-looking ape with his hand on his chin is a combination of two separate images: one shows a lioness roaring in Kruger National Park, South Africa, photographed by iStock^[1] user @johan63, while the other shows a chimpanzee with his hand on his chin, credited to Gravity Giant Productions.^[2]

The earliest accessible post showing the combined lioness and chimp image is a January 27th, 2020, Facebook^[3] post by the Arabic language page يوميات برج الاسد, with a caption that loosely translates to, "Overreacting is stressful, some situations are best ignored."

On July 23rd, 2020, the Spanish-language Facebook^[4] page Facundo Vivir del cuento reposted the image with the caption, "Cuando tu reacción sea como la del mono 🐒 vivirás mejor. 'Ya lo aprendí' 😀 ❤️," which loosely translates to, "When your reaction is like the monkey 🐒 you will live better." The post gathered over 4,5000 reactions in four years.

The earliest known ironic repost of the meme is a July 28th, 2022, post on X / Twitter^[5] by @necko, where the bottom text translates to, "The idiots scream, the intelligent give their opinion, while the wise masturbate." The post gathered over 1,000 likes in two years.

Spread

On October 5th, 2023, the Instagram^[7] page @monkey.posting posted the image, gathering over 6,000 likes, while Instagram^[6] page @animalswheretheyshouldntbe reposted the image on October 11th, 2023, gathering over 9,000 likes in two years.

On September 19th, 2024, Redditor^[8] /u/giannis1764 posted a version of the meme to the subreddit /r/Brawlstars to joke about how it feels to use the "mute" feature on Brawl Stars, gathering over 4,000 upvotes in five months. A September 21st, 2024, repost on Instagram^[9] by @ashbrawl gathered over 50,000 likes in five months.

On November 3rd, 2024, the Instagram^[10] page @freakyfacetimeapp posted a version of the meme that read, "how it feels to ragebait," gathering over 18,000 likes in three months. A December 13th repost to X^[11] by @moristiko gathered over 14,000 likes in two months.

On December 26th, 2024, the Instagram^[12] page @negusflex posted a version of the meme that read, "When bro lowkey right but you jus wanna annoy him." The post gathered over 900,000 likes in a month.

On December 30th, the TikTok^[13] page @unemployed4lyfe posted a version of the meme that read, "how it feels to keep saying ok while yo mom losing her shi at you," gathering over 8 million plays and 1.8 million likes in a month. The image was reposted to Instagram^[14] by @uncrustable.memess on January 3rd, 2025, gathering over 100,000 likes in a similar timeframe.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References