About

Sleeping Shaq is a multi-pane exploitable image series featuring descriptions of various events paired with a photoshopped picture of retired professional basketball player Shaquille O'Neal in different states of wakefulness, bearing many similarities to the Expanding Brain series.

Origin

On April 2nd, 2009, the advertising news blog AdWeek^[1] posted an article titled "Why Aren’t More Athletes Making Better Use of Facebook Public Profiles?", which contained a photograph of O'Neal sleeping (shown below, left). On July 24th, 2016, the Thot Patrol Facebook^[4] page posted a picture of O'Neal waking up for thots (shown below, right).

Spread

On February 9th, Twitter user @Krazygio^[5] posted photshopped versions of the O'Neal photograph along with a Whomst-style caption (shown below). Within three weeks, the tweet gathered upwards of 1,300 likes and 600 retweets.

On February 14th, 2017, Twitter user @shamanabeats^[2] uploaded a version in which Shaq awakens to people eating his spaghetti (shown below, left). Within two weeks, the tweet gained over 700 likes and 300 retweets. On February 16th, Redditor leejahn reposted @Krazygio's tweet to /r/BlackPeopleTwitter,^[6] where it received upwards of 1,500 votes (94% upvoted) and 20 comments over the next week. The following day, Redditor Drewbertt73 posted an image in which O'Neal becomes "ascended" when his "limited edition Matrix VHS collection" is stolen to /r/dankmemes^[7] (shown below, right).

On February 20th, Redditor legofroninja submitted an image of Shaq reacting to gunshots, "griefing": in Minecraft and cheaters on Roblox to /r/memeeconomy,^[3] claiming that "Sleeping Shaq memes are rising at a considerable rate" (shown below, left). On February 24th, Redditor thevaginalshit submitted a pciture of Shaq awakening to someone "talking shit 'bout my brand new Bionicle set" to /r/dankmemes^[8] (shown below, right).

Slothful Jeremiah

On April 11th, 2017, Tumblr user durbikins^[9] posted a text post which read "imagine what the shitposting game in the amish country is like." The same day, Tumblr user diosmiles^[10] uploaded an imagined Amish shitpost renaming Sleeping Shaq as "Slothful Jeremiah" (shown below, left). Tumblr user gay-for-sharks^[11] later uploaded a corresponding "real shit?" edit to the post (shown below, right). The post has gained over 137,000 notes overall.

After the post spread on Tumblr, other users began joking about Shaq being known as "Slothful Jeremiah." On November 29th, 2017, user kingdomheartsddd^[12] uploaded a joke about Slothful Jeremiah standing next to John Cena, which gained over 14,000 notes (shown below, left). On December 8th, Tumblr user wickgwames^[13] reblogged a post by knownlesbian with a character chart for "Slothful Jeremiah" in a post which gained over 30,000 notes (shown below, right). Meme Documentation covered the spread of the meme on December 10th.^[14]

Search Interest

Not available.

External References