About
I Have Failed You is an exploitable meme that depicts a scene from the Cartoon Network animated TV series Dexter’s Laboratory[1] in which the eponymous character looks up to a poster of Albert Einstein in his locker and says “I have failed you.” The picture is photoshopped to change Einstein to a character or person who is held in high regard by some groups.
Origin
In Season 1, Episode 3 titled “Dexter’s Rival,” originally aired on May 12th, 1996,[2] a new student named Mandark Astronomonov arrives at Dexter’s school and reveals himself to be both academically superior and evil, eventually forcing Dexter to shut down his lab. Shocked, Dexter looks up at a drawing of Albert Einstein taped on his locker’s door and says “I have failed you”.
Spread
The template grew into an exploitable in the early 2010s. Several varieties of the original image have been produced and posted on sites such as DeviantArt and FunnyJunk.. One of the early edits posted to DeviantArt was posted by amamortuum on March 31st, 2013 and featured Dexter saying the line to Adolf Hitler (shown below, left) DeviantArt user ryanthescooterguy posted a template for future exploitables (shown below, right).
“Boner For a Living Human Girl”
In September of 2017, a trend on /r/dankmemes involved taking the exploitable and replacing the picture with an animated female character, adding the caption, “When you accidentally get a boner for a living human girl.” On September 19th, user cravinpineapple[3] uploaded a version using a character from the film G-Force, gaining over 3,100 points (shown below, left). Another popular edit featured a character from Bionicle and gained over 1,400 points (shown below, right).
Various Examples
