The “distracted boyfriend” meme, in which people put various captions on a stock photo of a man checking out another woman while in the company of his partner, went viral in August. Months later, people are still looking into the other stock images that feature the models in the popular meme, thanks to photographer Antonio Guillem’s publicly accessible portfolio. When the meme first went viral, people started creating fan-fiction stories from these images. And apparently the internet is not tired of them.
On Monday, Andrew J Abernathy posted several of the stock photos to Twitter and wrote a story for the couple in them.
Looking up stock photos for work and I think I found "distracted bf" girl. pic.twitter.com/pU4flzuLDT
— Andrew J Abernathy 鍾偉中心 (@ajabernathy) November 20, 2017
https://twitter.com/ajabernathy/status/932689256409124864
https://twitter.com/ajabernathy/status/932689583279607809
https://twitter.com/ajabernathy/status/932689890994720768
https://twitter.com/ajabernathy/status/932690093176971264
https://twitter.com/ajabernathy/status/932690238694141953
https://twitter.com/ajabernathy/status/932695945309024256
https://twitter.com/ajabernathy/status/932696130441408513
Andrew tweeted that he “wasn’t aware” of similar stories that featured the stock photo couple, even though it’s been repeatedly covered online.
Thank you for showing me other peoples' similar work – ALL good, all funny! I genuinely wasn't aware of it. I saw the first photo while looking for "writer's block" images for work and spontaneously tweeted it out. I'm just happy other people could get a laugh today!
— Andrew J Abernathy 鍾偉中心 (@ajabernathy) November 21, 2017
But the internet didn’t seem to mind. The Twitter thread was widely praised.
Thread https://t.co/GnwGkFEw4j
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 21, 2017
This is so much weirder than I could ever have imagined. This thread is amazing. https://t.co/9PeS58EfzV
— Seth Mnookin (@sethmnookin) November 21, 2017
At first, you may not think this will be a promising thread. And then, you go on an amazing journey. https://t.co/bIFxvUQ5Gx
— Maureen Johnson (@maureenjohnson) November 21, 2017
This thread is Twitter storytelling at its best. https://t.co/IobD5gzL7O
— Bristow Marchant 🔥 (@BristowatHome) November 21, 2017
OMG. This thread. It is so much more than a meme 😂https://t.co/2t6xCakeJT
— Stacey (@ScotsFyre) November 21, 2017
This thread is epic!!😂😂😂😂 https://t.co/iUbX0ldh7b
— 𝓐𝓵𝓵𝓮𝓷 𝓡𝓪𝔂 42 (@2CynicAl65) November 21, 2017
https://twitter.com/aaronecarroll/status/932778534745059329
Long live the distracted boyfriend meme.