Sad Baby Monkey

Submission 1,408

Part of a series on Monkeys / Apes. [View Related Entries]

About

Sad Baby Monkey refers to a painting (or drawing) of a sad baby monkey (or chimp) looking at the viewer with teary, crying eyes over a green background. The art was created by DeviantArt artist faboarts in 2007. After its virality, many artists recreated the drawing in the 2010s. In 2024, the drawing became a notable reaction image and image macro on social media sites like Twitter / X. Creators added text captions to the image, most often relaying scenarios that'd make them feel sad like the baby monkey. Others compared the image to the Sad Ant With Bindle meme.

Origin

On February 13th, 2007, DeviantArt^[1] artist faboarts uploaded a drawing called "Chimpance." It showed a sad baby chimpanzee (or monkey) looking over its shoulder at the viewer with a green background. Over 17 years, the drawing gained roughly 259,400 views and 14,300 favorites (shown below).

Spread

In 2013, the drawing was reposted multiple times on Pinterest. ^[2]^[3] Artists on the website began recreating the drawing, like Pinterest^[4] artist Alesha Bondy Art (shown below, left). Also, the drawing was remixed on Russian social media sites like VK^[5] (example shown below, right).

On April 1st, 2017, YouTuber ^[6] Ianapolis uploaded an hour-long video in which he recreated faboarts' drawing, gaining over 9,000 views in seven years (shown below).

Despite prior spread, the Sad Baby Monkey image gained memetic usage en masse starting in late 2023. For instance, on December 15th, 2023, X^[7] user @annadeathbed used the monkey to represent before drinking coffee, earning over 2,300 likes in two months (shown below, left).

On December 24th, 2023, Spanish-speaking X^[8] user @buffbaabyy wrote, "monkey all sad and stubborn (it's me)," gaining over 13,000 likes in two months (shown below, right).

On January 31st, 2024, X^[9] user @eat5G shared the square-cropped version of the image (used by both X^[7]^[8] users @annadeathbed and @buffbaabyy) with no caption, gaining over 10,000 likes in eight days. On the next day, February 1st, X^[10] user @noodlehoes shared the image, captioned, "how I look at your fries after I finished my whole meal in 3 minutes," receiving over 245,000 likes in one week (shown below, left).

The trend spread on X going into February 2024, especially among Arabic-speaking users on the app. For instance, on February 2nd, 2024, Arabic-speaking X^[11] user @_Sumera wrote, "Your brother, who doesn't have dinner for two hours, saw you making a cheese sandwich," gaining over 6,200 likes in six days (shown below, right).

The viral tweets were reposted to Instagram,^[12] among other sites, in early February 2024.