About

Spy Kids 2 Glasses refers to an image from the 2002 film Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams in which the character Juni Cortez sees another team of spy kids, and his glasses fold out and zoom in so he can get a better look. The moment became a reaction image in the mid 2010s, often paired with captions describing situations one might need to take a closer look or squint.

Origin

While the original use of the picture as a reaction image is unclear, it likely started on Tumblr in the summer of 2013. The earliest-dated post featuring the image is a screenshot from Tumblr posted to memedroid^[1] by joeblow9042 on August 15th, 2013. The screenshot, shown below, is of a post by a Tumblr account called dirkstridersbraces, though the name is now out of use.

Spread

The image saw sparse use over the course of the next few years. On July 23rd, 2015, an example tweet^[3] was posted in a Buzzfeed article^[2] illustrating how difficult It is to view someone's Instagram profile picture.

The image appeared with some other variations, but it wasn't until February 2017 that the image began gaining some traction on meme-focused subreddits. On February 6th, an image was posted to me_irl ironically, pairing the image with text related to a recent surge in screenshots from movies being used in movies.

The same day, redditor tardcrusher^[4] posted the image to /r/dankmemes with a caption related to cheating off Asians on tests that gained over 1,300 points. This caught the attention of The Daily Dot,^[5] who covered the meme's growing popularity the following day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References