About

Ugly Duckling Pointing at Himself and Crying refers to two screencaps from the 1939 Walt Disney short The Ugly Duckling in which the duckling is shown pointing at himself while looking at the viewer and then shown crying while looking down. The screencaps became reaction images on social media platforms like Twitter / X predominantly starting in 2024. The first was used to admit or deflect blame or involvement, roughly replacing the questions "Who, me?" or "Are you talking about me?" The latter was used to portray sadness. Both images were commonly used together in a two-panel template, combining them to show a progression between the two emotions.

Origin

On April 7th, 1939, Walt Disney's The Ugly Ducking: A Silly Symphony was released.^[1] The short Western Animation film was uploaded to YouTube as early as October 28th, 2012, by YouTuber^[2] mis4930, receiving over 86,100 views in 12 years (shown below).

Currently, the earliest known memetic usage of the Ugly Duckling Pointing at Himself image was in a three-panel meme showing actor Chris Pine pointing at the Ugly Duckling (shown below). A reverse image search on TinEye^[3] dates the earliest known post on February 2nd, 2013, on a defunct website called www.3jokes.com. The webpage with the image was archived on the Internet Archive.^[4]

Spread

The abovementioned image spread on Facebook^[5] and Russian social media site VK^[6] going into 2013. Spread of the Ugly Duckling Pointing at Himself image continued in the 2010s on Facebook^[7] and elsewhere.

However, viral usage of the Ugly Duckling Pointing at Himself image didn't surface en masse until the 2020s. For instance, on May 22nd, 2023, Portuguese-speaking X^[8] user @coitadice quote retweeted a tweet that read, "a verdade é que todas as músicas de amor são sobre vc," roughly translating to, "the truth is that all love songs are about you." @coitadice quoted it with the Ugly Duckling image, receiving over 40,000 likes in a year (shown below).

On September 30th, 2022, Redditor^[9] DarkLink457 shared the image to /r/Gamingcirclejerk, adding a caption about Call of Duty (COD) fans "when activision starts taking measures to crack down on rampant racism," receiving over 2,300 upvotes in a year (shown below).

On April 26th, 2024, X^[10] user @bubblyqueefs tweeted a DM screenshot in which a man texted her the Ugly Duckling Pointing at Himself image in response to a lewd message, receiving over 59,000 likes in six months (shown below).

On August 26th, 2024, X^[11] user @VDWgiu tweeted the image of the Ugly Duckling Crying, adding a caption about "wearing a lot of blush" but people thinking that she has "full-blown rosacea." Over two months, the tweet gained roughly 65,000 likes (shown below).

On October 2nd, 2024, X^[12] user @strmstd quoted a tweet reading, "every family has that one person who had so much potential but then became mentally ill and can't do anything anymore." @strmstd used both images of the Ugly Ducking, amassing over 483,000 likes in 13 days (shown below).

The abovementioned meme was spread on websites like Instagram^[13] in the following days. Also, viral usage of the Ugly Duckling images continued on X^[14] going into October 2024.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References