Five images we always see online and where they come from

Scrolling through social media, you’ll notice the same images appearing time and time again. But why are we seeing them so often and where do they come from?

Some have now been around for more than a decade, with a new generation of social media users adapting them as they see fit. These photos are now firmly part of the language we use to communicate online.

Some are taken from television shows and films, but in other cases it’s hard to work out where they have come from. Other Side of the Story is here to help – how many have you seen before?

Why do we see the same photos so often?

It’s common to see the same photos used again and again but with different words and sentences superimposed on them.

This makes them memes – defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as an image, video or text passed “very quickly from one internet user to another, often with slight changes that make it humorous”.

Meme generating sites allow people to add different captions to represent different situations. They spread across social media because they’re easy to adapt to different situations and they’re also a lot of fun. Humorous captions make us want to share them, introducing them to even more people who might go on to create their own versions.

However it can be difficult to track their use. The hashtags used by people who have shared them tend to be more about the situation they’re posting about.

How do you find where photos have come from?

It’s important to be aware of the background to photos you find online, particularly how they may have been changed over time. You can do a reverse image search to try and find where the original has come from. Reverse image searches are useful for finding the source of a photo and spotting reused or edited images in viral posts.

While it can be difficult with memes because they have been adapted over time by the people who use them, a reverse image search can reveal important information about how they have spread and where.

You can watch Other Side of the Story’s Solve the Story video to find out how to do a reverse image search.

Here are five of the most used pictures and why you see them so often:

Distracted boyfriend

This one - showing a man turning his head to check out a passing woman while his girlfriend looks at him, appalled - needs little introduction. The “distracted boyfriend” meme, as it's now known, first exploded in popularity in 2017.

The original image is a stock photo taken by Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem. It was first uploaded to stock photo website Shutterstock in July 2015.

It became part of popular culture because the exaggerated expressions used by the models mean it’s easy to create your own narrative around it. The photo is commonly used to represent something you know you should focus on (the girlfriend in the photo) while being distracted by something else (the woman in the street).

The meme is currently one of the top five most popular on meme generator website Imgflip. Its tracker says it had 40,000 "captions over time" on 1 December 2025, although this has fallen from 81,600 on 1 March 2023. On Instagram, there are more than 5,000 results for the hashtag #distractedboyfriend.

Even companies and governments have used the meme, which has been controversial at times. Sweden's advertising regulator said an internet company broke gender discrimination rules by using a version in an advert in 2018. In 2019, it was used to promote Hungary's new family policies.

Pepe Silvia

The photo is taken from comedy series It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It shows the character Charlie Kelly ranting about someone he calls Pepe Silvia.

The episode first aired in 2008 but the photo appears to have gone viral after a video uploaded on 15 March 2017 by musician David Dockerty. It showed him playing drums to a clip of the scene and has now been viewed more than 3.7million times on YouTube.

The photo has become a way to joke about conspiracy theories or to show deep passion for a subject.

The original image on meme generating site Memepicker had 101,642 views as of January 2026. Under the search term "Charlie conspiracy", more than 30,000 captions have been added to it on another meme generating site, Imgflip.

It's even become the subject of a meta meme, a self-referencing meme about a meme. It shows a photo of the character Andy from sitcom Parks and Recreation with the words: "I don't know who Pepe Silvia is, and at this point I'm afraid to ask".

Success kid

This photo of a determined looking baby with one fist clenched has been doing the rounds since 2008. It’s known both as “Success kid” and “I Hate Sandcastles”.

It’s been widely used by people to celebrate small victories and things that turn out much better than expected.

The baby in the photo is Sam Griner and it was taken by his mother Laney Griner in summer 2007 on a family day out at the beach. It went viral after she posted it to her account on photo-sharing website Flickr.

The widely shared meme is a close crop of the baby’s head and hands over a background of purple hues. One version of it has now been shared 1.2million times on meme generator website Quick Meme. A Facebook fan page, called “Success Kid”, has 8,500 followers.

Angry woman yelling at cat

The meme is made up of two photos, one showing The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast members Taylor Armstrong and Kyle Richards. It also uses a second image of a cat in front of a plate of food.

The cat photo was first posted on Tumblr, a microblogging website, in the summer of 2018, with the caption "he no like vegetals". Hashtags including #catmeme #vegetables and #sillycat were used, helping to expose it to a wider audience on the site. It has now been shared 81,253 times.

The two-photo format took off in the summer of 2019 after they were combined by a user on Twitter - now X. People started using it to comically depict overreactions and arguments that have left them amused or bemused.

Confused maths lady

A close up of a woman looking confused or doing some intense thinking – depending on your interpretation - the original image is taken from Brazilian telenovela Senhora do Destino and shows the character of Nazaré, played by Renata Sorrah.

Telenovelas are soap dramas in Latin America, known for their over the top plots.

According to meme tracking website Know Your Meme, the earliest example of the original gif being used as a reaction image is from October 2013, when it was posted in the UKMix forum with the caption "I'm sure there is better music to hear while you wait for Beywance”.

It exploded in popularity internationally in 2016 after the maths symbols were added, with a new version then created with four images. It shows increasingly complicated equations around the woman’s head.

You’ll probably have seen the meme used by teens to – quite literally – express their confusion about maths lessons.

And another one you may have spotted…

Lionel Messi’s World Cup photo

If you have an Instagram account, you may well have come across the most liked Instagram post of all time.

The carousel of photos was uploaded by Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi to celebrate his team winning the World Cup in Qatar 2022. The lead image shows Messi himself with the trophy.

In March 2023 Guinness World Records verified it as the Most liked image post on Instagram and as of January 2026, it has been liked 74 million times.

The record was previously held by World Record Egg . In January 2019 the photograph of a hen’s egg took ten days to overturn Kylie Jenner’s record for the most liked image on the social media site – going viral in the process.

If you want to see where a photograph or meme you see all the time originated from then remember to go to our guide to how to do a reverse image search here.

This article was published in January 2026

Not sure if the news you’re seeing on social media is true or false? Can you always tell if the things you see online are real or fake? Learn how to get the other side of the story with our quizzes, videos and explainers.