About

Big Ounce refers to a series of image macros that feature an African American man with the caption "Big Ounce Professional Street Nigga." Online, the image has been captioned to joke about how this is a person worthy of admiration. Additionally, some variations replace the image of the man with another, more absurd character.

Origin

On September 20th, 2013, Redditor ^[1] tillicum posted the original picture of Big Ounce in the /r/funny subreddit. Resembling a screenshot from a news interview, the character Big Ounce is seen looking directly at the camera with the caption "Big Ounce Professional Street Nigga." They entitled the thread "What qualifications do you need to get this title? I'm thinking of applying for it." The image (shown below) received more than 1,400 points (92% upvoted) and 50 comments.

Spread

The following year, on February 7th, the picture appeared on the website We Know Memes^[3] with the caption "Professional Street Nigga- What I want to be when I grow up" and Meme Center.^[4]

On February 15th, 2015, Redditor^[5] DankTanker420 posted the image on the /r/BlackPeopleTwitter subreddit. The posted, as of August 2017, received more than 4,100 points (95% upvoted).

Three days later, Instagram ^[6] user @daquan posted the image with the caption "'So what do you want to be when you grow up' Me:" The post (shown below) received more than 36,000 likes in two-and-a-half years.

On March 31st, 2016, Redditor^[2] garretth10 posted a picture of a chihuahua wearing a football jersey surrounded $100 bills. The original chyron of "Big Ounce" is photoshopped to the bottom of the photo. The post (shown below) received more than 10,700 points (85% upvoted) and 100 comments in a year and a half.

Following the chihuahua post, people online began posting variations of the meme with different dogs, other animals, pop-culture figures and/or cartoon characters, among other variations (examples below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References