When You Get Paid Biweekly

About

When You Get Paid Biweekly is an exploitable meme format that follows the template "When you get paid biweekly," with a luxury item listed under Week One and a bowl of ice water labeled "Ice Soup" listed under Week Two. The comparison meme is used to joke about one's spending habits and one's splurges of choice under a limited budget. The meal jokingly portrayed as "Ice Soup" represents the austere lifestyle one has to follow after spending all their money on a luxury item.

Origin

On March 10th, 2016, Tumblr^[1] user @lovelylarayyy posted the earliest known version of the meme captioned, "When You Get Paid Biweekly," with a lobster dinner listed under week one and "Ice Soup" listed under week two. The post gathered over 154,000 notes in seven years (seen below).

Spread

The meme was then posted to Instagram and Twitter in subsequent years, sometimes with the caption's font changed and often with the lobster dinner being replaced with a different luxury item.

On January 17th, 2020, the Instagram^[2] page @nochill_latinos posted a version of the meme where Ice Soup was replaced with a buttered tortilla. The post gathered over 11,000 likes in three years (seen below, left). On June 21st, 2021, Redditor^[3] @ecrhircis posted the meme to /r/dogecoin with the words on the template edited to read April '21 and June '21. The post gathered over 3,700 upvotes in two years (seen below, right).

On July 16th, 2023, Tumblr^[4] user @curly-fried posted a version of the meme where the luxury item is a lolita dress. The post gathered over 11,000 notes in two days (seen below, left). Also on July 16th, Twitter^[5] user @SkinnyTuna posted a version of the meme where lobster is traded out for a Yamaha keyboard. The post gathered over 73,000 likes in two days (seen below, right).

Template

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References