About

Why Can't You Just Be Normal? refers to a scene from The Babadook in which the main character turns to her son in her car and cries "Why can't you just be normal?" The child responds by shrieking. The scene became an exploitable where the characters are labeled as different objects.

Origin

In The Babadook (2014), the main character of the film is a mother of a young boy with social difficulties who believes The Babadook, a character from a terrifying children's book they read together, is real. After a harrowing scene, the boy begins shrieking in the backseat of their car, causing the exasperated mother to turn and exclaim, "Why can't you just be normal?" The boy continues shrieking (shown below).

Spread

The scene didn't begin becoming a notable meme until several years later. On April 16th, 2017,^[1] stills from the scene were created as a template on Meme Generator. In the course of the following several months, an edit featuring the ironic heralding of the title character as a gay icon appeared on Tumblr (shown below, left). An Imgur post from January 19th, 2018, featuring a cat as the boy gained 36 upvotes (shown below, right).

Other popular edits of the scene used more political and topical references. For example, an Imgur post from January 17th, 2018, referenced the Tide POD Challenge and gained over 1 million views (shown below, left). An image referencing the country of Catalonia was posted to Imgur on October 27th, 2017, gaining 18 points (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References