About

Vanessa Stare is an exploitable image macro that uses a still of the character Vanessa Shelly (played by Elizabeth Dean Lail) from the 2023 Five Nights At Freddy's movie. The character's blank stare, stemming from a moment when the camera zooms in on them, became a meme similar to other staring formats such as Sigma Stare and Lightskin Stare, with text being added to the image, different items edited on top and redraw memes being posted following the film's release in late October 2023.

Origin

On October 27th, 2023, the FNAF movie was released, which featured the scene in which the camera zooms in on Vanessa's expressionless stare as she gazes into the camera. On October 28th, edits of the stare started to appear online, with YouTuber PhoneyHydro^[1] uploading a video called "The FNAF Movie is Crazy [5 seconds of glee]" in which the stare is shown while audio of the phone guy conversation is played over a remixed version of the Ke$ha song "Take It Off" (shown below).

Spread

On October 29th, 2023, Redditor u/dauntlessArtist^[2] uploaded the stare as part of a meme to the subreddit /r/FNAFcringe. In the meme, which some took as a play on modern internet slang, the so-called "fazbearstare" is given when a "securitycel," meaning security guard but in the style of incel, says something "fnafphobic" or anti-Five Nights At Freddy's (shown below).

The following day, October 30th, X user @blahaj_blast^[3] uploaded Vanessa Stare to start a thread in which they posted every redraw variation of it that they've seen, with several others being added via replies and retweets. These redraw edits were mostly comprised of other memes, such as Daeodon at the Door and Oppenposting (shown below).

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Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References