Hampter memes are memes about a series of videos about a cartoonishly wide-eyed gray hampster. The YouTube character developed a community of fans and spawned fan art and memes about the rodent. Although the memes have spread out to include other hampsters, there's a lot of love for the original.
The first photo of the hamster at the heart of the meme was shared on Reddit's r/funny in August 2014. The image, also shared on Imgur, is captioned, "My friend's hamster looks like a cartoon."
A zoomed-in version of the photo was later shared in a YouTube video posted by @lyrical7391. The 0:05 video simply has someone pronouncing the misspelled "hampter" as the word appears on the bottom portion of the video. Reposts of the quick video spread across YouTube, sometimes with different filters applied to the video.
The popularity of the meme reached an all-time high in the spring of 2022. However, it wasn't in its original format. Although the meme was originally a photo and then a video, the meme was taken to the next level when it went musical. Two songs titled "Hampter" were released in 2022. Both were instrumental only, but the beats had somewhat different vibes.
Hampter by SUMBANDO (trblmkr) has hundreds of plays on SoundCloud, while Hampter by Cowbelly has over 1500 streams on Spotify.
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