About

Squidward Looking Out the Window refers to a reaction image and object-labeling meme taken from the animated television show SpongeBob SquarePants in which the character Squidward is seen looking out his window at SpongeBob and his friend Patrick having fun. The image has been used in situations where one is jealously observing others having fun but can't participate themselves.

Origin

The image comes from the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "That Sinking Feeling," which aired July 8th, 2010 (shown below).^[1][2]

The image was first used online as a reaction image on December 8th, 2013. On Tumblr, user heliolisk^[3] used the image in a post captioned, "I don't think I've ever felt more of a personal connection to a cartoon character than I do to Squidward," gaining over 204,000 notes (shown below).

Spread

The image began going viral on Twitter several months later, as several meme accounts posted it with the caption "juniors looking at graduating seniors like." One of the most popular tweets came from @chloeonvine,^[4] whose tweet of the joke gained over 31,000 retweets and 31,000 likes (shown below).

Over the following years, the image continued to see use as a reaction image in various situations where one sees others having fun but can't join in themselves. Some variations turned the image into an exploitable by labeling the characters in different ways.

For example, on February 25th, 2017, Twitter user @Jcbartlett25^[5] labeled the three characters Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo to make a point about Xbox's poorly reviewed games, gaining over 850 retweets and 1,400 likes (shown below, left). On October 27th, 2017, Tumblr user qwp^[6] published a post about being jealous of others playing Super Mario Odyssey, gaining over 35,000 notes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References