Socially Awkward Penguin

A penguin waddles forward, flippers out, looking like it has no idea what to do with its body. The caption narrates some specific moment of social failure: "wave back at someone... they were waving at the person behind you." "Say "you too" when the waiter says enjoy your meal." Top line sets up the cringe, bottom line is the gut-punch. It's a confession booth for everyone who has ever overthought a handshake.

This was the relatable-cringe meme of the early 2010s, back before "relatable" was a content genre. It spawned a whole family of recolored penguins — Socially Awesome Penguin on a sunburst orange background was the inverse, the smooth-operator version, and people loved pairing them. For a few years it was inescapable on Reddit and Tumblr.

Then Getty Images showed up. Because the photo was technically theirs, Getty started sending demand letters to blogs and small sites that posted the macro, reportedly asking for hundreds or thousands of dollars per image. It became a minor cause célèbre about copyright trolling and basically scared the meme out of circulation. These days it's pure nostalgia — you'll see it in "millennial memes" throwback posts and nowhere else. It's dead, and the lawyers killed it.