I'm You, But Stronger

Confirmed 226,770

About

"I'm You, But Stronger" is an image macro series in which two comparable characters are shown side-by-side with the caption suggesting that one of the two is the superlative incarnation of the other.

Origin

The earliest known usage of the phrase can be found in a tweet posted by @TheMtoLife^[1] on December 5th, 2015, in which the user mocks the departure of Zayn Malik from the English-Irish pop boy band One Direction by comparing two group photos of the band, one taken before Malik's departure and the other one without Malik, with the caption reading "Who Are You? I'm You But Stronger."

Spread

On January 2nd, 2016, Twitter user @WhyLarryIsStronger^[2] posted a set of paparazzi photos of American comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres vacationing on a yacht in St. Barts with One Direction member Harry Styles and his girlfriend Kendall Jenner, accompanied by the caption highlighting the similarity between DeGeneres and Styles' outfits. The tweet accumulated over 600 likes and 500 retweets.

On February 26th, Tumblr blog Special Meme Fresh^[3] posted clip art images of two orange-colored cylinders in reference to the "Long Boy" in-joke, with the second one being taller than the first, and the superimposed captions reading "who are you?" and "I'm you but longer." Within the first two weeks, the post garnered more than 10,000 notes.

On February 28th, Special Meme Fresh^[4] posted another image macro comparing a character artwork of Snake from Metal Gear Solid to a photograph of a snake smoking a cigarette, which accrued over 7,000 notes in less than two weeks.

Between late February and early March 2015, dozens of additional derivative image macros featuring the phrase surfaced on Tumblr^[5] and Twitter^[6]; since the emergence of the meme, it has been regarded by some as a shitposting trend.