Sad Baby Monkey
Contents
About
“Sad Baby Monkey” is a one-panel reaction image of a painted baby chimp with huge, watery eyes, looking back over its shoulder against a green background. A caption above the picture describes some small disappointment, and the monkey is how the poster feels about it. It went viral on X/Twitter in early 2024, with a big following among Arabic-speaking users.
Origin
The picture is a drawing called Chimpance, posted to DeviantArt by the artist faboarts on February 13, 2007. It picked up hundreds of thousands of views over the years, and around 2013 it was reposted all over Pinterest, where other artists started painting their own versions.
Meme use took off in December 2023, when X users began posting a square crop of the drawing as a reaction. On February 1, 2024, @noodlehoes captioned it "how I look at your fries after I finished my whole meal in 3 minutes" and got over 245,000 likes. A wave of similar posts followed that month, many of them in Arabic, and the tweets were soon reposted to Instagram.
Meaning
The monkey stands for quiet, pleading sadness. Captions usually describe a tiny injustice: someone stops scratching your back, a customer doesn't tip, you've finished your food and theirs is still there. The joke is how pitiful the monkey looks over something so minor.
Most of the time people cast themselves as the monkey, so it reads like a guilt trip. It's sometimes compared to the Sad Ant With Bindle image, which works in a similar way.
Examples
Popularity
See also