About

Thumbs Up Crying Cat, also known as Thumbs Up Sad Cat, is a reaction image of a cat with photoshopped teary eyes giving a thumbs up. The image, akin to Crying Cat, is typically used to suggest sadness but with an added feeling of compliance signified by the thumbs up. Though the earliest crying cat was posted in 2014, the Thumbs Up Crying Cat was created in June 2019 and became popular on Reddit and Twitter.

Origin

On August 26th, 2017, Discord user posted the earliest known variant of the meme in the JabGood server, naming the emote "JabGood" (shown below).

That year, people began posting versions of the cat with tears welling in its eyes. One of the earliest was published on November 11th, 2017 (shown below).

On June 17th, 2019, Redditor IAMAdumbgirl posted the original photoshopped image captioned "sad thumbs up" to r/sadcats^[2] (shown below). The post received over 1,700 points (99% upvoted) in a year.

Precursor

Crying Cat, also known as Schmuserkadser, refers to a series of photoshopped images of cats with teary, glassy eyes to appear as though they are sad. The earliest known usage of the Crying Cat was published by an anonymous Meme Generator ^[1] user on June 11th, 2014 (shown below, left). The image is a photoshopped version of Serious Cat, due to the fact that the background of the image and ears and color of the cat are identical (shown below, right). Within four years, the image has generated more than 925 images.

Spread

In April 2020, The image gained popularity as a reaction image on Twitter and Reddit. On April 18th, Twitter user @SaoryEmanoelle^[3] responded to @RespectfulMemes' post about thinking only of someone else to which they responded with the reaction image captioned, "They not thinking about us though lmao" (shown below, left). On June 22nd, Redditor edmemesthrowawaybby posted the image to r/EDanonymemes^[4] and captioned it "When you’re chilling with your BF and he asks if you’re good but all you can think about is how fat your thighs look when you cuddle" (shown below, right). The post garnered over 200 points (100% upvoted).

In late July, the image became popular on r/dankmemes. On July 27th, Redditor mijuzz7 used Thumbs Up Crying Cat in a captioned post to r/dankmemes^[5] that accumulated over 47,000 points (96% upvoted) in three days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References