How can I create a High Five meme?

You can use our free High Five meme generator. Just upload the template or use our existing one, add your custom text, and download.

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High Five Meme Generator

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What is the High Five meme?

The High Five meme (also called Drowning High Five) is a four-panel comic by artist Anton Gudim where a hand reaches out of water begging for help, but the other person high-fives it instead - and the drowning hand sinks. It satirizes unhelpful responses, tone-deaf advice, and performative support when someone actually needs help.

Origin & History

Anton Gudim, a Russian illustrator known for ironic social commentary comics, published this four-panel strip on Instagram and VK around 2017. The visual gag - misreading a drowning person's plea as a request for a high five - landed because it mirrored real frustrations with unhelpful friends, corporate platitudes, and performative concern.

The meme gained traction in mental health discussions, workplace humor, and political commentary, where users labeled each panel with a real problem and an absurdly useless response. Its simple cause-and-effect structure made it one of the most reusable formats for calling out "thoughts and prayers" energy when substantive help was needed.

How to Use / Use Cases

Mocking unhelpful advice from friends or coworkers
Calling out performative support that ignores the real problem
Joking about corporate pizza parties instead of fair pay
Describing someone celebrating when you needed actual help
Satiring toxic positivity in mental health conversations

Use our free High Five Meme Generator to create custom memes. You can add text, resize, and customize the font. Perfect for sharing on Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and Discord.