Memes are everywhere if you know what you're looking for. It comes in all shapes and sizes; it could even come from a children's cartoon.
"SpongeBob SquarePants" is a popular cartoon enjoyed by both children and adults that grew up watching it; many of its skits and scenes are easily converted into some of the memes we now enjoy on various social media sites.
Here's the story of one such example: the mocking SpongeBob.
It Is One Of The Modern Memes
Mocking SpongeBob is one of the more modern memes to appear on the internet. According to Know Your Meme, the earliest iteration of the scene that contained it being used as a meme occurred on May 4, 2017, when Twitter user @OGBEARD posted a screenshot of the scene where SpongeBob acts like a chicken with the caption "How I stare back at little kids when they stare for too long."
By People That Grew Up Watching SpongeBob SquarePants Made It
The scene where the meme came as part of the cartoon's episode "Little Yellow Book," which first aired on Nov. 25, 2012. With "SpongeBob SquarePants" being a children's cartoon, it is easy to assume that kids and prepubescents at the time (probably millennials and Gen-Z'ers, per Vox) are watching it happen live on TV for the first time.
Over time, many of the show's audience grew up, still remembering that funny scene. @OGBEARD may be one of the people that grew up with the cartoon and, upon remembering it, made a meme that features SpongeBob from that episode, becoming the popular meme format we know today.
Twitter Spread The Meme
Unlike most memes, which saw their spread from websites like 4chan, Reddit, and Tumblr, the Mocking SpongeBob meme spread through Twitter. Interestingly enough, it happened the next day @OGBEARD posted his Chicken SpongeBob picture.
Twitter user @lexysaeyang posted the same screenshot of Chicken SpongeBob and added a call-and-response element to the meme, with the response being typed by alternating between lowercase and uppercase text.
This typing style created the mocking element that would become deeply intertwined with the picture, completing the Mocking SpongeBob meme's DNA and launching it to relevance.
Soon several news sites published articles on the meme, including The Daily Dot, Crave, Teen Vogue, and Mashable.
It Has a Human(?) Counterpart
Funnily (or disturbingly) enough, the internet came up with a human version of the Mocking SpongeBob meme in the form of a man reenacting the pose SpongeBob made with a heavily edited face to resemble the one SpongeBob made.
The pictures came from the Facebook page Corporate Bro in June 2017, which received a significant spread and relevance due to its connection to the source material.
It's In Nickelodeon's All-Star Brawl As A Taunt
Nickelodeon may be well aware of the fact that their character is being used for a meme format that mocks people in hilarious ways. As such, it added the chicken-like appearance SpongeBob creates in "Little Yellow Book" as his taunt animation in its action fighting game, Nickelodeon All Star Brawl.
