About

Unfortunately, the Clock Is Ticking is a quote about mortality from the 1988 novel Dance, Dance, Dance by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. In January 2014, a notification window meme based on the quote was posted on Tumblr, offering options "I Understand" and "Remain Ignorant." The quote eventually inspired a series of memes featuring a sad cat celebrating his birthday and other imagery in the early 2020s that used the notification window as an exploitable.

Origin

In 1988, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami published his novel Dance, Dance, Dance. The novel contains^[1] the following quote about mortality:

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.

On January 20th, 2014, Tumblr^[2] user loomineers posted a Windows notification meme based on the quote, adding the options "I understand" and "Remain ignorant" to it. The post (shown below) garnered over 177,600 likes and reblogs in 10 years.

Spread

The meme did not achieve significant spread until April 2020. In February 2020, an Elmo version of the meme was circulated. For example, on February 25th of that year, Imgur^[3] user CodyBurkett posted it as a part of a meme dump (authorship unconfirmed, shown below).

On April 3rd, 2020, Redditor vladgrinch posted a photograph of a sad-looking cat in a party hat staring at a candle placed in a can of cat food. The photograph, titled "Celebrating your birthday in april 2020," garnered over 27,000 upvotes in the /r/Eyebleach^[4] subreddit in four years.

On April 6th, 2020, iFunny^[5] user ChainsawMan combined the photograph with the Windows notification meme of the quote, with the resulting image being featured and garnering over 49,000 smiles on the platform in four years (shown below).

The image saw widespread circulation in the following years, with multiple reposts going viral.^[6][7] More versions of the meme followed, with users pairing the Windows notification with various imagery and sometimes adding music (examples shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References