Ayy Lmao

About

“Ayy Lmao” is an expression and Tumblr hashtag typically associated with a picture of an alien that looks slumped over with an agape mouth.

Origin

The image of the alien has circulated the web since as early as November 2012, appearing on a number of Portuguese and Spanish-language paranormal sites including Tempo Espaço^[1], El Gurú^[2] and El Rincon Paranormal.^[3] Though it is unclear where the photo was first posted, it was referenced on Twitter on March 31st, 2013 in a conversation between two users.

Every time I see that damn alien "ayy lmao" I lose it

— Jesse (@BoneIess) March 31, 2013

Spread

By May 23rd, 2013, the image appeared as a reaction comment on the celebrity gossip blog Oh No They Didn’t.^[4] On June 8th, a Facebook fan page^[5] titled “AYYLMAO” launched, posting a handful of image macros with the phrase but not the alien photo. That August, YouTuber jorin pop created a seven second video (shown below) pairing the image with the phrase “ayy lmao” in a hot pink font scrolling across the screen.

On September 22nd, Tumblr user haunted-sugoi^[6] posted the image with the caption “this is all that matters.” Three days later, the single topic blog Ayy Lmao Alien^[7] was created and began reblogging other photos of aliens with the caption from across Tumblr. On October 15th, a second Facebook fan page titled Ayy Lmao^[9] was created, this time, using the familiar alien image as its cover photo. Around the same time, a Yahoo! Answers^[10] question was asked about the meaning of the phrase. Later that month, a /r/AyyLmao^[11] subreddit was also created. As of October 28th, there are 21 Tumblr URLs, both parked and active, that use a variation of Ayy Lmao.^[8]

Notable Examples

Additional examples can be found on Tumblr with the tag #ayy lmao.^[12]

Search Interest

External References