12-Year-Old Me Realizing I'm Gay

About

12-Year-Old Me Realizing I’m Gay is a two-panel image macro meme, portraying one’s sexual awakening through the Megan’s Interesting meme reacting to the inspiration for their discovery. The meme circulated on Twitter in July 2020.

Origin

On October 22nd, 2006, episode “Mindy Loves Josh” of the American TV series Drake & Josh premiered. In one scene of the episode, character Megan Parker, portrayed by Miranda Cosgrove, is shown looking up symptoms of a skin disease on a computer, at one point taking a sip from a soft drink can and commenting “Interesting” (shown below).

Drake & Josh Sewing machine Selfie Photography

On July 22nd, 2020, Tumblr user gay-irl shared the earliest known version of the meme featuring a topless picture of Tom Wellington as Clark Kent on the television series Smallville and the Megan’s “Interesting” meme labeled “12-year-old me realizing I’m gay.” The post received more than 5,200 notes in less than two weeks (shown below).

12 year-old me realizing I'm gay 92 INTERESTING. Barechested Muscle Arm Chest

Spread

Three days later, on July 25th, 2020, Twitter user @matheus_ocunha shared the meme and received more than 33,000 likes and 6,400 retweets. This is among the first major points of spread onto Twitter.

Throughout the day, others began sharing variations of the meme. Twitter user @imjustinrandall, for example, shared a variation that replaced Tom Wellington with a shopping bag from the store Abercrombie & Fitch that features a shirtless man. The post received more than 7,800 likes and 1,100 retweets in less than one week (shown below, left).

That day, Twitter user @Nikhil09121 shared one of the most popular versions on the site, which featured a screenshot of Chris Evans as Johnny Storm from the film Fanstastic Four. The post received more than 17,000 likes and 3,500 retweets in less than one week (shown below, center).

Other variations soon emerged, such as a July 26th, which updates the Megan’s Interesting label to read “12-year-old me realizing I’m bi.” The post, shared by Twitter user @itsrachelrachel received more than 22,000 likes and 6,500 retweets in less than three days (shown below, right).

On July 27th, 2020, the website TheTab.com published an article about the meme.