Meme lore
What is the Expanding Brain meme?
Expanding Brain (also called Galaxy Brain) is a four-panel meme showing progressively larger, more luminous brain images paired with increasingly absurd or pretentious ideas. It satirizes fake intellectualism by treating the most ridiculous option as the most enlightened, though it can also be used sincerely to rank ideas from basic to advanced.
Origin & history
The Expanding Brain meme originated on Reddit's r/dankmemes on January 31, 2017, when user janskishimanski posted a four-panel image pairing brain X-rays with the progression 'who,' 'whom,' 'whomst,' and 'whomst'd.' Each panel showed a brain growing more elaborate and radiant, mocking increasingly pretentious grammar.
The template spread rapidly through February 2017 on r/dankmemes and r/MemeEconomy as users replaced the whomst progression with topics like video games, politics, and programming. By mid-2017 it had migrated to Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. The meme's ironic structure - where the bottom panel is usually the joke answer - made it enduringly popular for both sincere tier lists and self-aware shitposting.
The template spread rapidly through February 2017 on r/dankmemes and r/MemeEconomy as users replaced the whomst progression with topics like video games, politics, and programming. By mid-2017 it had migrated to Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. The meme's ironic structure - where the bottom panel is usually the joke answer - made it enduringly popular for both sincere tier lists and self-aware shitposting.
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