Squidward Cleaning "Loser" Window Graffiti

About

Squidward Cleaning "Loser" Window Graffiti refers to a scene from the 1999 pilot episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where Squidward wipes away window graffitied with a drawing of his head and the word "loser" overtop. A screenshot of the scene started to become prominent in memes including image macros in the 2010s, often used to joke about deleting something you thought would be successful after it fails to take off. It is also used as a reaction image to call someone a loser.

Origin

On May 1st, 1999, the pilot episode of SpongeBob SquarePants,^[1] titled "Help Wanted," aired on North American television. In the episode, SpongeBob goes to apply for a job at the Krusty Krab. He runs to the restaurant shouting "I'm ready, I'm ready" repeatedly, getting the attention of Squidward, his neighbor and cashier at the Krusty Krab, who is standing outside the restaurant wiping at a window graffitied with a drawing of his head and the word "LOSER," with an arrow pointing to the drawing (shown below).

On October 30th, 2010, Tumblr^[2] user spongeboboverdose uploaded a GIF of the scene. This is one of the earliest known uploads of the scene in an image format. It was re-uploaded to Know Your Meme^[3] a year later on August 25th, 2011.

Spread

The scene in both a still-image format and GIF format became increasingly popular over the course of the 2010s. On November 21st, 2016, Twitter^[4] user svrrealism posted the image captioned "me deleting a selfie that got 3 likes," gaining over 61,500 likes and 30,900 retweets in five years (shown below). A screenshot of the tweet was posted to Tumblr^[5] the next day, gaining over 38,400 notes in the same span of time.

Memes using the image often play off of the idea of deleting something out of shame. On February 17th, 2017, Twitter^[8] user @jocar918 tweeted the image captioned "Me deleting the text convo after being left on read so I don't get reminded how unwanted I am," gaining over 380 likes and 280 retweets in four years (shown below, left). It was screenshotted, recreated and reposted numerous times across social media.^[6] On April 22nd, 2018, now-suspended Twitter^[7] user tweeted, "me deleting a tweet that I thought was funny after it getting 0 attention," gaining over 263,000 likes and 88,000 retweets in three years (shown below, right). The post was featured in a Buzzfeed^[9] article on April 30th.

On November 24th, Redditor pineapple-1001 posted an image macro to /r/dankmemes^[10] using the image captioned "Me cleaning my cum during NNN," referencing listing No Nut November, gaining over 12,000 upvotes in three years (shown below).

A photoshop of Squidward wiping the window with the graffiti dressed as a clown started to circulate online around 2019, although its origin is unclear. An early example was posted to Twitter^[11] on May 13th, 2019 in a meme criticizing the ending of Game of Thrones, gaining over 2,100 likes in two years (shown below, left). On June 25th, Redditor Zert420 posted a meme using the image to /r/meirl,^[12] gaining over 12,000 upvotes in a similar span of time (shown below, right).

Templates

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References