Sleeping Shaq
Where it came from
A two-panel image of Shaquille O'Neal — top panel is him clearly uninterested/asleep, bottom panel is him wide awake and attentive. Became a meme in 2017 as the "what I ignore vs what I actually care about" format.
Two panels of Shaq. Top: he looks bored, slumped, completely tuning out whatever's being said. Bottom: same guy, eyes wide, sitting up, fully dialed in. You label the top with a thing you're supposed to care about and the bottom with the dumb thing you actually care about. "Important work meeting" / "Someone mentioning the snack table".
It's a very clean "real priorities" format — the kind of self-roast where you admit that your attention goes exactly where it wants to, regardless of what you're supposed to be focused on. And Shaq is big enough that the posture change feels properly dramatic.
Still used, though less than its 2017 peak.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
