Twitter User Unearths Ancient Meme from 1921

April 16th, 2018 - 4:28 PM EDT by Adam Downer

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how you think you look when a flashlight is taken vs. how you really look

Scrolling through the droll funnies of a satirical magazine from the turn of the twentieth century, one Twitter user has found a 97-year-old instance of the "What You Think You Look Like vs. What You Actually Look Like" joke, an evergreen meme used to illustrate the humor in grandiose self-perception and continues to see use to this very day.

Over the weekend, Twitter user @YoRHaw tweeted her discovery of a comic strip concocted by the whimsical lads at the Wisconsin Octopus and featured in a 1921 issue of the early 20th century weekly satirical magazine Judge.


In both substance and form, the comic is hardly distinguishable from satirical tweets of the 2010s about selfie obsession and self-image issues; one can almost see this poor chap imagining himself as a debonair Gatsby-type while he poses for a picture, only to be struck with the disappointing reality in the limelight, quite literally.

Naturally, other Twitter users were delighted to see that their great grandparents appreciated shitposts just as much as they do.




Twitter user @svederik made a particularly salient observation about what comic says about the unknown timeline of meme culture.


To echo Ida's point, this isn't the first time someone has dug up an uncanny prototype of present-day memes from long before the times of the Internet, especially when it comes to exploring the psychology of self-perception in everyday situations. Some of the most notable examples include (shown below, left to right):


An illustrated map comparing a peaceful and idealized life against a chaotic and difficult life in the 19th century America. A cartoon showing three portraits of the same person from different perspectives An illustrated map of New York City and the rest of America

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