About

STFU Doc or X Is Just a Character is an exploitable meme format based on a comic by Dan Piraro in which a therapist tells a patient, curled in a fetal position on the couch, "Remember, it's a beer commercial. That kind of happiness may not be attainable." In April 2025, a cropped and mirrored version of the comic in which the therapist says Satoru Gojo from Jujutsu Kaisen "is just a character" and the patient replies, "stfu doc," went viral on X / Twitter, inspiring further edits using the phrasal template "X is just a Y," with X being a subject and Y being a category the subject fits into.

Origin

On March 2nd, 2012, Bizarro Comics^[1] published a comic by artist Dan Piraro that shows a therapist talking with his patient, who is curled into a fetal position and facing the back of the couch. The therapist says, "Remember, it's a beer commercial. That kind of happiness may not be attainable."

The comic became the subject of memes over the following years as people began editing the speech bubble and adding more text.

For example, on June 10th, 2024, Threads^[2] user @bars posted a meme that crops and mirrors the comic and adds a speech bubble to the patient, garnering around 600 likes in a year.

On April 19th, 2025, X^[3] user @kissysatoru posted a meme using a similarly cropped and flipped version of the meme in which the therapist says, "Gojo is just a character," and the patient says, "STFU doc," garnering over 12,000 likes and 2,400 reposts in two weeks. This is the earliest known version of the meme.

Spread

The meme garnered viral spread over the following weeks, inspiring further edits. On April 21st, 2025, X^[4] user @jinxslawyer posted a version of the meme about the character Jinx from Arcane and League of Legends, garnering over 1,500 likes in roughly two weeks.

On April 22nd, X^[5] user @ posted a version using an image of the character Yi Sunsin from the web novel Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint that gained over 5,000 likes in the same span of time.

On April 23rd, 2025, the Gokurakugai Facebook^[6] page posted a version of the meme that gained over 110 reactions in roughly a week.

On April 25th, Tumblr^[7] user the-nameless-nerd posted a meme using the same template of the therapist and his patient, garnering over 4,600 notes in a week.

On April 26th, 2025, X^[8] user @lukeanakfc posted a version of the meme about Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and its rerelease in theaters for its 20th anniversary that garnered over 6,500 likes in six days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References