

The billboard promotes Orban's family protection action plan. On March 13th, Facebook user Gábor Ligeti posted a photo of a billboard in Budapest, recognizing the models from the "distracted boyfriend" meme (shown below). Hungary wants to boost their population and Orbán views the incentive to be preferable over letting immigrants into the country. On February 10th, Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, announced that he would promise major tax breaks for Hungarian women who have more than four children. On June 26th, Twitter published a Moments page for the photos titled "Distracted boyfriend's partner is stunned by phone and computer screens." Meanwhile, The Daily Dot published an article about the stock photos titled "The Distracted Boyfriend’s girlfriend is probably looking at this meme in shock." Within 24 hours, the tweet gained over 2,100 likes and 300 retweets. The same day, Twitter user photoshopped several of the photos on to the original Distracted Boyfriend image (shown below). They captioned the tweet, "I’ve found the 18th century equivalent to the distracted boyfriend meme." The post (shown below) received more than 34,000 retweets and 110,000 likes in 24 followed the tweet by writing, "Fun fact: the painting is by Joshua Reynolds and it depicts the actor David Garrick stuck between the alure of Comedy and the prestige of Tragedy, so here’s a depiction of how the meme would have worked in its original context." They posted the painting with each of the characters in the painting labeled "comedy," "troubled actor" and "tragedy." The post (shown below, left) received more than 700 retweets and 2,900 likes in 24 hours. On April 16th, 2018, Twitter user tweeted an image of a painting from 1761 by painter Joshua Reynolds side-by-side with the Distracted Boyfriend meme.

The meme beat Galaxy Brain, Right in Front of My Salad, Roll Safe, The Floor Is… and Tiny Trump. On April 15th, 2018, Distracted Boyfriend was named "Meme of the Year" at the 10th annual Shorty Awards. On August 22nd, Tumblr user klubbhead posted a compilation of similar photos from the series, featuring the man looking at the same woman at various instances with at the end showing his romantic partner in disstress and questioning why she didn't dump him.
DISTRACTED BOYFRIEND MEME GENERATOR SERIES
Photo Series CompilationsĪs the popularity of the stock photo started to spread, people discovered similar stock photos in the series with the same actors in various scenarios. In March of 2018, Slate cited it as one of the memes most influential to the spread of the Object Labeling trend of the late 2010s. In the coming days, several posts about the meme format were submitted to /r/MemeEconomy. Within 24 hours, the post gained over 31,200 points (93% upvoted) and 130 comments on /r/me_irl.

On August 21st, Redditor danikger submitted a captioned version of the photo in which the man looks back at the 2017 solar eclipse while being stared at by "scientific evidence supporting the dangers of staring at the sun" (shown below). The creator of Phil Collins meme has since stated that they were inspired by the political meme page "Siyasettin," who's earliest available version was posted on January 30th, 2017, as well. On January 30th, 2017, the Prog Düşmanlarına Verilen Müthiş Cevaplar Facebook page posted the image with captions identifying the man as Phil Collins peering pop music while prog music looks on (shown below, right). According to a post published on the Meme Documentation Tumblr blog, the earliest known captioned version of the photo was submitted to a Turkish Facebook group at an unknown date. On November 2, 2015, the source image, taken by photographer Antonio Guillem, was posted on the stock photo database iStock under the description "Disloyal man with his girlfriend looking at another girl" (shown below, left). Distracted Boyfriend, also known as Man Looking at Other Woman, is an object labeling stock photo series in which a man looks at the backside of a woman walking by while another woman, presumably his romantic partner, looks on disapprovingly.
