About

Small but Knowing Clown refers to a clown doll that spread on Tumblr due to what people interpreted as a sly expression on the clown's face, inspiring art and jokes.

Origin

On November 7th, 2016, Tumblr user @lymphonodge^[1] posted the picture of a clown and captioned the image "me when I'm a small but knowing clown." The post gained over 19,000 notes. Prior to that post, a picture of the clown sans caption was posted by user g00 on November 6th, 2016.^[2]

Spread

Roughly a year after the original post, the clown started becoming a meme thanks to several posts by Tumblr user egowave. On December 18th, 2017, he responded to an ask with the phrase "i am a small but knowing clown."^[3] After that post, other users began referencing the clown in asks, prompting egowave to begin making photoshops of the character (examples shown below).

The spread of the meme on Tumblr led to Meme Documentation covering it on December 30th, 2017.^[4] After the post, the clown continued to spread on Tumblr as people created fan art and photoshops of the character. egowave photoshopped the clown into a Stock Photo of a woman holding a mirror, gaining over 8,500 notes (shown below, left). A post by catbots created a 3D rendering of the character, gaining over 3,600 notes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References