About

Teacher Thinks I'm Paying Attention is a catchphrase used in a series of memes where a show or movie is shown on a computer or phone screen during class under a version of the phrasal template, "Teacher things I'm paying attention but I'm watching X," "X" being the show. The meme first started appearing on TikTok in September 2025, spreading over the following months to sites like Instagram, Reddit and X.

Origin

On September 7th, 2025, TikToker^[1] @berdly864 posted a photo of SpongeBob SquarePants playing on a laptop during class, captioned, "Teacher think I'm paying attention whole time I'm watching the Bob," garnering over a million views in three months. This is the earliest known version of the meme.

Spread

The meme continued to spread over the following months.

On September 16th, 2025, Redditor u/Competitive_Ruin_168 posted a version of the meme to the /r/SmilingFriends^[2] subreddit that gained over 1,800 upvotes in three months.

On September 23rd, TikToker^[3] @thevoidboivr posted a version of the meme about watching Joe Bartolozzi in class, garnering over 2 million views in three months.

On October 8th, TikToker^[4] @hmzknlci posted a video version of the meme where he points the camera to his computer to show that he's playing the video game One Iced Latte With Breast Milk, Please! garnering over 178,000 views in two months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References