The SpongeBob Floating meme pairs an image of SpongeBob SquarePants glowing and floating in the air with Ye’s “Wolves” intro. Similar to the Galaxy Brain meme, social media users often combine the gag with a caption about an unremarkable or cheaply obtained accomplishment.
This meme gained popularity in 2019 and spawned a few variations as people Photoshopped the character to glow more, float in various settings, or take on accessories.
What is the SpongeBob Floating meme?
Also known as the Kanye West Wolves meme, after the artist’s former name, the meme began as a brief video clip of an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants that pauses just as the title character begins to levitate and glow while the intro of “Wolves” plays in the background.
People may also wield it as an image, especially after it became recognizable as a meme without the song, and later often edited the screenshot into SpongeBob floating with headphones, sometimes attached to an iPod or MP3 player. On TikTok, users picked up the trend by creating videos of themselves appearing to float.
Captions paired with the meme typically take up the theme of teenagers and younger kids having a first experience that adults might consider mundane, such as reading a math problem that contains their name in a textbook.
SpongeBob Floating meme origins
The imagery for the meme comes from season one, episode nine of SpongeBob SquarePants, titled “Nature Pants.” In the episode, the character is at work when he begins to fantasize about turning into a jellyfish so that he can live among them. This is when he starts to float and glow, as seen in the meme.
The first appearance of the joke appears to be in a YouTube video by user Vaporman, posted on August 22, 2019. It shows SpongeBob standing and smiling in his workplace kitchen before transitioning to him floating in the air, blurred and with a snowy filter, with a caption about high school Spanish students passing by using Google Translate.
Ye released the song “Wolves” on July 29, 2016, as part of his seventh studio album The Life of Pablo.
Meme spread
The SpongeBob Floating meme became popular across YouTube before spreading to Instagram, where it began to take on different forms as people increased the glow effect on the character or Photoshopped him out of the kitchen and into places like the pearly gates. It also appeared on platforms like Twitter and Reddit as a still image soon after the original YouTube video debuted.
In September 2019, the meme took on a new life on TikTok, where people used simple camera tricks to make it look like they or their pets began to float after they did something kind of cool or something good happened to them. Most of these videos pair the theme with the sound of Ye’s The Life of Pablo track.
Newer variations of the meme often use the image to express how one feels when listening to a beloved song or engaging with anything else that might give you goosebumps.
Variations
One of the more popular variations of the meme shows SpongeBob floating wearing a pair of headphones, demonstrating the sublime nature of whatever he is listening to.
Meme examples
@ikudzai when you successfully catch the belt #fyp #foryoupage #foryou #viral #wolves #wolveschallenge #belt ♬ Wolves – Kanye West
Related memes:
- Gangster SpongeBob memes for the pure of heart
- Meme History: Mocking Spongebob
- FreakBob is calling…I ain’t answering
- Evil Patrick is your favorite new SpongeBob meme
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