Mocking Spongebob
Where it came from
A 2012 SpongeBob SquarePants episode called "Little Yellow Book" where SpongeBob acts like a chicken. A screenshot of him hunched over with one eye bulging became a meme in 2017 as the "mocking voice" image.
SpongeBob hunched over in a weird chicken-like crouch, eye twitching. The format: you write a statement in a normal sentence on the top, then repeat it on the bottom with alternating capital letters ("lIkE tHiS"). The alternating caps are the voice of someone mockingly impersonating whatever dumb thing was just said.
It's the meme version of the "and I totally meant what I said" sarcastic-mimicking voice everyone does. The alternating caps are doing almost all the work — the SpongeBob image is just a visual anchor for the tone. You can use it to make fun of your own past self for saying something stupid, or to dunk on someone else's take.
Still used. The alternating-caps format has outgrown the meme itself — people type things in SpOnGeBoB case in regular conversation now, no image needed.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
