About

Thicc Starfish, also known as Big Butt Starfish, refers to viral photographs of sea stars that appear to have a rear end which become jokingly referred to as thicc.

Origin

On October 25th, 2015, a since deleted Reddit account posted a picture of a starfish with a butt to r/pics^[1] (shown below). The image received over 700 points (90% upvoted) in three years.

Spread

On October 25th, 2015, Redditor mattsk8n reposted the image to r/photoshopbattles^[2] and received over 6,700 points (91% upvoted) in three years. Redditor blue_awning's photoshop posted to the comment section gained over 1,400 points in three years (shown below, left). Redditor's the_afroburger and TheBlazing point also posted photoshops to the thread receiving 2,100 points and 2,600 points respectively in three years (shown below, right).

Over the next few years, various pictures of starfish with butts were posted to r/funny. On July 13th, 2018, Redditor mmmmmmburritos posted and image of a starfish to r/Funny^[3] commenting that "This starfish is T H I C C" (shown below, left). The image gained over 100 points (84% upvoted) in 11 months. On May 24th, 2019, Redditor brasshunky posted a similar image r/Funny^[4] commenting that "This starfish dummy thicc" (shown below, right). The image garnered 76 points (80% upvoted) in a month.

On June 30th, 2019, Twitter user @Babyshoujo^[5] posted a photo of a starfish captioned, "Saw a thicc ass starfish at the aquarium today 😌" (shown below, left). The tweet gained over 170,900 retweets and 631,100 likes in a week. On July 1st, Redditor BayArea1227 posted the image to r/photoshopbattles^[6] and received over 53,900 points (95% upvoted) and 1,300 comments in two days. Reddito mamayfish commented an edit that received over 8,800 points in two days while Redditor artunitic posted another which received over 5,500 points in two days (shown below, right). On July 2nd, USA Today^[7] interviewed "Nate Jaros, curator of fish and invertebrates at the Aquarium of the Pacific" where the photo was taken. Jaros explains:

"In this photo, the sea star is on a vertical rock face with two of its arms holding the rock and two arms hanging in a relaxed position. Sea stars sometimes relax their arms such as when they are eating. Since the sea star is oriented vertically, gravity is causing its internal components to slump."

The following day, Ebaum's World^[8] published an article titled "'"Thicc' Starfish Becomes The Internet's Latest Meme," highlighting several jokes and photoshop edits of the starfish.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References