Shakira on the Computer
Contents
About
“Shakira on the Computer” is a one-panel image macro built from a 1997 photograph of a teenage Shakira sitting at a desk, hands resting on a keyboard, turned toward the camera with a wide smile. The joke people keep coming back to is that the monitor behind her is plainly switched off, so she is posing at work rather than doing any. Captions usually sit on a white bar above the picture, and the format circulates on Twitter/X, Reddit, Tumblr and Instagram as both a caption meme and a plain reaction image.
Origin
The photograph was taken by Óscar Berrocal in 1997 in the newsroom of El Heraldo, a Colombian newspaper. Shakira was still a teenager at the time and years away from her international breakout.
It began circulating as a meme among Spanish-speaking social media users in January 2018. On January 19th, El Mundo ran an article collecting early examples, among them a version promising good luck online to anyone who happened across the photo. Nine days later, Redditor butterxoxo posted what is generally counted as the first English-language version to /r/thesims, captioned "Me canceling my plans to stay home and play The Sims." A repost to /r/OldSchoolCool on January 31st pushed it much further, and it has resurfaced steadily ever since, including a widely shared Tumblr version in July 2025.
On August 4th, 2026, Shakira recreated the photo herself on Instagram, captioning it "Me da la impresión de que ya he visto esto hace algún tiempo" ("I get the impression that I've already seen this some time ago"). In the restaging she is printing a picture of a dog rather than typing, and the post set off a fresh wave of the meme across X and Reddit.
Meaning
The caption almost always speaks for the person posting it, and the subject is nearly always looking busy without being busy. Canceling plans, pretending to work, burning a whole day and having nothing to show for it. The dead monitor carries the joke: her posture says effort, the black screen says otherwise.
It also works as a straight reaction image, good for quiet smugness or for the specific nostalgia of a late-90s bedroom computer setup. The Spanish-language "good luck" variants use it differently again, closer to a chain letter, offering fortune to whoever scrolls past it.
Examples
Popularity
See also