Samuel Johnson Reading Meme Template

Samuel Johnson studies a book in the first panel and looks up with a baffled expression in the second. Pair an ordinary reading task with the sentence that makes you stop and question it.

This is the reaction to writing that makes less sense the longer you look at it. A strange instruction, a contradictory message, or an impossible requirement gives the lower portrait something to react to.

The serious painted setting adds to the effect: a reader who looks equipped for difficult books has apparently met his match in a delivery notification.

The upper panel is Joshua Reynolds’s 1775 portrait of the writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, often called Blinking Sam. The Huntington’s collection record describes Johnson holding a book close to his face and squinting at the text. [1]

The lower panel uses another Reynolds portrait of Johnson, dated 1772 in Artnet’s account of the meme. They were separate paintings; stacking them creates the apparent sequence of reading and looking up. Know Your Meme documents a captioned use of the reading portrait on FunnyJunk on March 17, 2012. [2] [3]

Use the first caption to name the text you are reading. In the second, quote or invent the confusing detail. Johnson’s expression supplies the question that follows.

You can instead put the strange text in the first panel and write a short reaction below. Keep the book and both faces clear so the change in expression remains easy to follow.

What you are reading

Over the lower clothing in the upper portrait, beneath the book.

The confusing detail

Across the coat near the bottom of the lower portrait.

• Choose one contradiction or surprising detail.
• Keep the reading task ordinary enough to recognize.
• Place text over the lower clothing in each panel.
• Avoid explaining the entire document when one line is enough.