is this butterfly
Where it came from
This comes from the anime 'Evangelion' and became a widespread meme format around the early 2010s, though it gained major traction on Twitter and Reddit in the late 2010s.
The meme features a character pointing excitedly at a butterfly, and it's used to represent someone discovering or pointing out something they think is interesting, funny, or absurd. The joke is super versatile—you can put literally any two things in the format and it works. Like, someone will point at something dumb and label the butterfly as something they're pretending is cool, or point at something genuinely weird and act all proud of finding it. It's the perfect reaction image for 'look at this weird thing I found online' energy. The wholesome anime art style mixed with the goofy pointing gesture makes it work for basically any situation where you're either excited, confused, or making fun of something.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
