[game over]

We will start w the meme in question! One I've certainly seen before, and so have MANY others lol

It's small n sorta faint but there's def a visible signature beneath A1 that appears to read "@garmekoii" to the best I could tell. Googling the name tho only bring up ONE result from an aminoapps post on Oct 25, 2017 where a user posted it (along w several similar memes) and credits this one specifically to garmekoii on tumblr, with the note "*I literally spent an hour searching to find that the username was written on this,,,,, I just hope it's accurate"

Unfortunately, if that tumblr existed, it and the variants have long-since been gone. A glimmer of hope for a sec there but, ah, definitely not it lmao

Outright searching the URLs in tumblr search didn't result w anything even from a browser, which was. Unsurprising lmao ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and the image searches from Google and tineye unfortunately only pulled up any number of the times this has been reposted in "stolen from X" reposts on dA that just. Point back to the prev dA user, none of which were the OG artist fhsjfbshf and in fact many just say "meme isn't mine/I just stole this" FHSJFBSH😂😭 with tineye at LEAST I could determine that, well, this meme is at LEAST from early February 2017 or earlier

A SMARTER (and better-rested) PERSON MIGHT'VE THEN GONE THROUGH ALL OF THE PREV TUMBLR URLS ON DEVIANTART INSTEAD!!! I WAS NOT THAT PERSON AT 11:30PM LMAO (to be fair I did check garmekoii and gamekoii...but not gamekoi) instead like a lunatic who Didn't have to wake up less than 6hrs later for work, I was clicking through the dA results one by one on tineye until......someone in the description credited it back to @\gladejade here on tumblr :0 unlikely to be the artist, but maybe SHE had a link back to the artist!! So to her archives I went, staring August 2017 and back, as that was when the dA post was from

And!!! There were indeed drawings of her filling prompts from the meme w Trigun characters on January 1, 2017 lmao!!!! Only she was taking the prompts on her Twitter so the meme wasn't actually on her blog (in the midst of writing this n double-checking smth i DID actually find a reblog of Jade's tumblr post of the meme from Jan 4, 2017 but for whatever reason the original post was deleted lol so she did have it on tumblr at least for a bit to take prompts here too), but!! Twitter was still linked!! At this point i thanked CHRIST she was not an artist who'd been chronically posting multiple images a day every day since January 2017😭 so it only took a minute to find scrolling thru the media tab!............but, sadly, no additional insight onto a link back to the artist, even a defunct link or @ 😔😔😔😔

At this point I was getting close to calling quits at least for the night, maybe to try taking a look on my actual computer come morning, but.....I noticed that Google image search lets you put in a URL, so, figured what the hell. The meme was originally sent to me AS the direct tumblr PNG address, maybe that'd bring up something different...??? Possibly???????

It didn't lmao so on a whim I just started typing the url variations into google in quotes to see if ANYTHING would pull up, and-

Holy shit lol!!!!! I could’ve gone to sleep right then from embarrassment at having checked that spelling of the URL on deviantart yet, fuck lmao but!! Lo and behold!!!!!!

THEY FUCKING LIVE(D)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They were going by Koi but now by Fish. The gallery here is sparse and the meme is nowhere in sight, but at this point I could confidently say I had found the original artist who created the meme! But, I am nothing if not extra, and wanted to see if I could find the original post of the meme, if it still existed. Just for fun! There was ONE archived version of the dA from January 23, 2022, but for whatever reason it returns a 403 error when trying to view the snapshot. So to the social links I went!! Insta linked to a defunct account but the Twitter is alive-ish and well, at least (hasn’t been touched since mid-2023), and THAT links to what appears to be a fairly current carrd!!! She even has a tumblr @\disco--fish !!! I’m not directly tagging bc I don’t want to be weird, but PLEASE go check it out n give their art some love!!

Anyway, back to the meme hunt

Insta was the best bet and wouldn’t ya know, he’s actively posting art as of July 2024!!! Fuck yeah!!!!! No sign of the meme though, here or on their doodle account 🤔 could sense I was nearing the end one way or another – at least I was gonna be able to confidently say I’d found the artist in order to credit her for the meme!!! Since I was thoroughly embarrassed by having not checked the gamekoi dA earlier and saving myself a good chunk of time, I tried those on insta, just in case.

And!! The gamekoii account still exists, hot damn!!!! No meme in sight THERE, but there is a link to what was a Hamilton art side account. I’ve nearly exhausted my options so. Why not lol. Scrolling back through the gallery, and. Holy shit-

!!!!!!!!

IT!!!!!!!!!

THE MEME, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND!! DATE OF POSTING DECEMBER 29, 2016!!!!!! WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE original, or at least the oldest surviving post of the meme BY the artist, 8 years later (if it was ever posted to gamekoii I’ll never know bc that Insta isn’t in the wayback machine) with the digital paper trail to prove the original artist to credit for it!!!!!!!!!!

gamekoii (insta) links to oui.lafayette (insta), which holds the original meme!

oui.lafayette (insta) moves to cocoakoi (insta), which moves to the defunct sucrefish (insta), BUT gamekoi (dA) links to the same defunct insta as well as ssugarfish (twt)

ssugarfish (twt) in turn links to discofish (carrd), which links to disco--fish (tumblr) and the ACTIVE diiscofish & zuccheropesce (both insta). There IS also a bsky under discofish but looks like, similar to twt, it hasn't been used in abt a year :0

A complete, albeit scattered, timeline of Fish's art over the years, including a much loved (& criminally reposted lol) expression meme!! Idk, I find that cool as shit from like an "art history" n preservation standpoint :000

Anyway, was this necessary???? To a degree!! I think crediting artists is absolutely vital, EVEN if that means pointing back to a dead URL if they've abandoned old personas or posting online as a whole. And I absolutely could've found it much quicker if I'd gone to bed like a reasonable person and simply tried doing it today from a proper desktop browser ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but! Here we are lol

So, if you've ever used this meme: