Bottom Text

About

Bottom Text is a phrase commonly used as the default filler text for blank templates on image macro generator websites. Due to its frequent and unintended use in low-quality instances of Advice Animal memes, the phrase itself has become a staple of ironic memes.

Origin

The origin of the placeholder text can be traced back to as early as 2009 when the image captioning website MemeGenerator^[1] was created. In the caption-editing mode, the site would automatically populate each blank image template with phrases "Top Text" and "Bottom Text," which could then be customized by the user to one's liking.

Spread

As the popularity of Advice Animal memes continued to grow into the early 2010s, along with the adoption of the identical filler text by other image macro generators, such as Quickmeme^[2], Cheezburger^[3] and Imgur^[4] (shown below), so did the volume of incomplete or low-quality image macros in which the "bottom text" would remain unchanged.

However, the intentional usage of the phrase in original image macros didn't take off until mid-to-late 2015, around when the concepts of ironic memes and shitposting became recognized as staples of the Internet meme culture, which soon prompted a noticeable influx of ironic image macros featuring the caption "bottom text" as satirical commentaries on the oversaturation of Advice Animal memes and the mainstreaminization of the internet meme culture at large. In 2016, the "bottom text" meme continued to gain traction through ironic meme communities on major social media platforms, such as Tumblr,^[5] Reddit^[6] and Weird Facebook.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References