The Distracted Boyfriend meme, also known as the “Guy Looking at Girl” meme was one of the most popular memes of the late 2010s. In fact, it gained so much popularity that it was awarded “Meme of the Year” at the 2018 Shorty Awards.
Origin of the ‘Guy looking at girl’ meme
This meme started off as a simple stock photo series in which a man looks at the back of a woman walking by while another woman, presumably his partner, looks at him disapprovingly. It was uploaded to the stock photo database iStock under the description, “Disloyal man with his girlfriend looking at another girl,” by photographer Antonio Guillem.
The image soon made its way to Tumblr, where a user labeled the photo’s three characters. He called the man “Phil Collins,” the woman he was looking at was “pop” music, and the woman looking on disapprovingly was “prog” (progressive rock) music.
Spread of the ‘Guy looking at girl’ meme
Soon, the image in its meme’ed format made its way to Instagram, with users putting their own spin on the threesome. One user titled the three, “The Youth,” “Socialism,” and “Capitalism.” On Reddit, a user submitted a version in which the guy was labeled “me,” the girl he’s looking at, “solar eclipse,” and the disapproving partner, “scientific evidence supporting the dangers of staring at the sun.”
As the meme gained popularity, online users discovered the rest of the photo series with the same models, depicting them in different scenarios. Imaginative uses began to compile these images to form a storyboard.
One of the first to emerge showed the man looking at the other woman in different instances, and ended with his romantic partner appearing to be in distress, questioning why she hadn’t dumped him. On Twitter, user @akfamilyhomeak posted a tweet showing the same scenario, but ending with the two women getting closer to each other over coffee.
Top 10 Anime Plot Twists pic.twitter.com/GqmUGx9G8W
— Akfamilyhome (@Akfamilyhome) August 24, 2017
Later, another user, @oranforest, posted the same series, adding one more image that featured the women together, with the implication that the scorned girlfriend dumped her boyfriend and had instead gotten together with the woman he had been eyeing.
The meme expanded into an 18th-century version of the scenario when Twitter user @ELXGANZA later tweeted a 1761 painting, “David Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy” by Joshua Reynolds, along with the “guy looking at girl” meme.
They captioned the tweet, “I’ve found the 18th century equivalent to the distracted boyfriend meme.” The post received over 110,000 likes in a day. The Daily Dot covered the trend as well.
Evolution: The distracted girlfriend meme
In late 2017, another photograph by Antonio Guillem started to make the rounds, this time with the roles reversed where the girl was looking at a passing guy, while her boyfriend looked on in horror.
A Redditor submitted the new image along with the older version, with the caption, “The tables have turned.” The new variation spread online, and on October 30, Daily Dot published an article about it titled, “Distracted girlfriend brings gender equality to the meme world.”
Conclusion
The global phenomenon of the Distracted Boyfriend meme is just another example of the internet’s ability to transform content well beyond its intended use. Although the use of his images didn’t lead to any monetary compensation, Antonio Guillem will certainly be immortalized in meme culture as the original creator of the photographs.
