About

SpongeBob Wanted Maniac refers to an image macro and reaction meme featuring SpongeBob wearing a hat and holding a remote as he looks around suspiciously in front of a poster with his image that reads "Wanted Maniac." The image is often used to joke about oblivious people not realizing that they are an example of what they criticize.

Origin

The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Hall Monitor" aired in the show's first season on August 28th, 1999, and shows the cartoon's titular character taking his role as hall monitor of Mrs Puff's Boating School too far. In one scene in the episode, SpongeBob can be seen looking around while wearing his hall monitor costume, with a poster in the back showing that he is a "Wanted Maniac."^[1]

One of the earliest notable and traceable posts made using the image of Spongebob standing in front of his own "Wanted" poster is an April 11th, 2018 Tumblr^[6] post by spongebobssquarepants, gathering over 60,000 notes in seven years.

Spread

On February 5th, 2019, Redditor^[4] /u/ChrisTweten posted a meme that read, "YouTube trying to figure out whose been killing their platform," gathering over 20,000 upvotes in five years.

On August 5th, 2021, LilNasX posted the meme to his Twitter^[3] account, gathering over 85,000 likes in three years.

On August 21st, 2023, Redditor^[5] /u/child-of-old-gods posted a similar meme in GIF form to /r/memes. The post read, "Elon Musk trying to find the guy destroying Twitter" and gathered over 4,000 upvotes in a year.

February 17th, 2023, X^[2] user @HardFactorNews posted the meme in response to a story about a top Putin official's death, gathering over 26,000 likes in a year.

Template

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References