About

Surfing Demon refers to the lithograph titled “Surf or Die” by Don Ed Hardy created in 2004 that features a demon riding a wave. The image was shared on Reddit in 2018 where it acquired various captions and was featured in numerous Photoshop battle edits.

Origin

In 2004, artist Don Ed Hardy created the color lithograph “Surf or Die” (shown below). The piece was donated to the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts by the artist. On November 20th, 2018, the piece was shared to r/Art by Redditor Dittidot and received over 34,700 points (90% upvoted) in a year (shown below).

Spread

On November 20th, 2018, Redditor alias0000 shared the image to r/funny and added the caption, “I cant drown my demons. They know how to surf” which received over 10,500 points (90% upvoted) in a year. That same day, the image was posted to r/photoshopbattles by Redditor LuluChi and obtained over 25 submissions. On February 4th, 2020, Redditor ghostbc-fan1990 posted the image with the caption, “I can’t drown my demons they know how to surf” to r/memes and accumulated over 4,700 points (98% upvoted) in four months (shown below, left). On June 24th, Redditor Spaghet-ee posted the image to r/MemeTemplatesOfficial but labeled the wave and the demon separately (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Know Your Meme Store

External References