The Side Eye Horse meme consists of a close-up photo of a horse shot through a wide-angle lens, distorting the image into an expression of horror. After first appearing on Facebook in 2023, it began to trend as a reaction meme in the early summer of 2024 and soon inspired fan art due to the amusing appearance of the horse’s face.
The horse joins a collection of other subjects from side eye memes, including dogs, skeptical children, and Michelle Obama.
Side Eye Horse is the result of a long-standing trend of taking photographs of animals with a wide-angle lens to make them look cute, silly, or downright weird. This horse ended up as a weird variety, with the shot cropping out the ears and mane so it looks like a long, triangular face with one large eye staring into the void and a snout that ends up appearing almost human at the end, with the mouth slightly open.
Social media users typically use side eye memes as reaction images to convey suspicion, skepticism, or even contempt. However, they more often use the Side Eye Horse meme to express shock, horror, or disgust at odd or troubling human behaviors, such as putting grape jelly on a pizza.
People may also post it to represent awkward moments in life, including watching something from the corner of their eye or an odd position.
The horse first appeared on the Facebook group known as “This horse was assembled INCORRECTLY,” which is dedicated to photos of animals that make them look bizarre, deranged, or otherwise wrong.
User Natalie Mamo shared multiple photos of the meme’d horse and others taken with the distorting lens on September 21, 2023, including the one that would launch the trend. Some have also suggested that she specifically used the iPhone camera's 0.5x zoom, which often produces similar results. The photo set gained over 1,500 reactions and over 200 comments.
The photo of Side Eye Horse started appearing on Twitter as a reaction meme in late May of 2024. Perhaps the earliest use was on May 31 by @Loccdawggg in a quote of a tweet by a user who has restricted their account, but it appears to be over a cake-related conflict or competition of some kind. The meme soon spread to Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok.
The image reached Tumblr by July 2, when user themysteriousmurasamecastle posted it with the simple comment "this pic is unbelievable." In typical form, other Tumblr users began to produce fan art of the horse in various styles, including the form of a Wojack, or finishing out its body as far too short for a horse or as other animals like fish.
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.
The post The Side Eye Horse meme is for the sus among us appeared first on The Daily Dot.
