A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish

Updated Jan 29, 2025 at 10:15PM EST by LiterallyAustin.

Added Mar 05, 2020 at 12:37PM EST by Matt.

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About

A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish is a three-panel image macro series featuring an image of a man making a wish on a shooting star and the shooting star turning in the opposite direction after the wish is made.

Origin

On September 8th, 2019, Redditor ^[5] user JohnnySparkxs shared the earliest known version of the meme. In panel one, the man sees the shooting star and says, "Look, a falling star." Next, the image features the text "I wish I could scout Blue." The final panel shows the shooting star turning in the opposite direction. The post received more than 570 points (98% upvoted) in less than one year (shown below).

Look, a falling star I wish I could scout Blue

Spread

On September 27th, 2019, Facebook ^[1] user ab0rteddreams shared the earliest known version of the meme. In panel one, the man sees the shooting star. Next, the image features the text "I wish I was happy." The final panel shows the shooting star turning in the opposite direction with the caption "lol fuck you." The post received more than 980 reactions and 490 shares in less than one year (shown below).

A shooting star I wish I was happy aborteddreams lol f--- you

Over the next 24 hours, the meme continued to spread. For example, on September 28th, Twitter ^[2] user @ItsJustJ0rd shared a variation with the second panel reading "I wish for a Little Nightmares 2 level creator" (shown below, left).

On October 8th, Redditor ^[3] javaalien shared the original "I wish I was happy" variation and received more than 2,400 points (91% upvoted) in less than six months.

Months later, on February 4th, Redditor^[5] M4tik_ posted a variation in which the star explodes and the man says "Finally." The post received more than 22,900 points (97% upvoted) in a little more than one month (shown below, center).

On March 4th, 2020, Redditor^[4] RetardGoblin69 shared the version in the /r/memes subreddit. The post received more than 35,000 points (96% upvoted) in less than 24 hours.The meme went viral on Reddit with variations appearing throughout the website (examples below, right).