Distracted boyfriend
Distracted Boyfriend (German: distracted friend ) is an Internet Meme , triggered by a stock photo of the Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem from the year 2015, was presented with a form of infidelity. In August 2017, the photo developed into a viral phenomenon on social media with numerous variants and offshoots.
The stock photo
The stock photo was taken by Antonio Guillem in mid-2015 in the Catalan city of Girona . The photo provided should depict the act of infidelity in a playful and fun way. The photo was part of a whole series of recordings with the same actors, which briefly and concisely characterize various events in a couple relationship.
The photo was uploaded to Shutterstock and is therefore subject to the license conditions established by Shutterstock . The description of the picture read: "Disloyal man walking with his girlfriend and looking amazed at another seductive girl while strolling with his girlfriend looks delighted after another seductive girl" . The two protagonists became known by the nicknames "Mario" and "Laura".
The internet phenomenon
The first known use of the photo on the Internet took place in January 2017 in a Turkish Facebook group, which equated the young man in the photo with Phil Collins , who turned away from prog rock to pop music . This interpretation was picked up on an English-language Facebook page and then on Twitter and Instagram .
The photo became a viral phenomenon in August 2017 when a Twitter user titled the young man as “youth” and his girlfriend as “capitalism”; the other young woman stood for "socialism". The meme and modifications of it became a phenomenon on Twitter, Reddit and Facebook and helped the “Image Macro”, a meme variant in which pictures are provided with short, concise texts, to become popular.
Variants and offshoots
Early variants of the meme used other photos from the series Antonio Guillem took in 2015 to tell a full story. In early 2018, internet users noticed similarities between the distracted friend and a promotional photo for the movie Mission: Impossible - Fallout starring Henry Cavill and Angela Bassett . In April 2018, a Twitter user described the 1761 painting David Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy by painter Joshua Reynolds as the 18th-century equivalent of the distracted friend, making the painting itself a meme.
In May 2018, a Twitter user combined the coin commemorating Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding with the image of the second girl in the photo of the distracted friend. In June, the film critic posted a scene from Charlie Chaplin's short film Payday from 1922, which resembles the image of the distracted friend. In July 2018, a photo went viral of a young woman licking an ice cream while her boyfriend checks on another woman. In October 2018, a wedding photo, taken on the beach, of the groom looking at a muscled man rising out of the water, spread widely.
reception
The distracted friend was named one of the best memes of 2017 several times, for example on NDTV , The Next Web , PC Magazine and Narcity . The Washington Post included the meme in their Meme Hall of Fame of 2017. In April 2018, the meme won the “Best Meme of 2017” category at the tenth annual Shorty Awards .
Trivia
In 2019, the Hungarian government used another photo from the series by Antonio Guillem to promote more offspring in Hungarian families.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Nadja Schlüter: Bet on the wrong ones . SZ-Magazin , March 13, 2019
- ↑ There are even more great and very funny photos of the "Distracted Boyfriend" couple . Photo gallery on the website of Neon (magazine)
- ↑ a b c d e f Distracted Boyfriend on KnowYourMeme.com (English)
- ↑ Collette Reitz: This Meme With Meghan Markle & Prince Harry's Coin Will Be Your New Favorite . EliteDaily.com, May 3, 2018 (English)
- ^ Matt Novak: Did Charlie Chaplin Invent the Distracted Boyfriend Meme? Paleofuture.gizmodo.com, November 6, 2018 (English)