Thumbs Up Crying Cat

Origin¶

The meme belongs to the broader “Crying Cat” family — a long-running series of edits in which a cat is given enlarged, glistening, tear-filled eyes to look mournful. The teary look is a Photoshop treatment that has been applied to many different cat photos since the mid-2010s, becoming one of the internet’s go-to symbols for sad-but-soft emotion. The “thumbs up” variant composites a crying cat with a photoshopped human hand giving an approving thumbs up. This particular combination circulated around 2019 and is closely associated with Reddit’s r/sadcats community, though the underlying cat images and the Crying Cat template itself are older. The exaggerated-tears Photoshop style spread from the mid-2010s onward, and editors gradually pasted the sorrowful eyes onto every conceivable subject before the thumbs-up hand was added.

What it means / how it’s used¶

The image conveys a bittersweet blend of sadness and forced acceptance — a watery-eyed “I’m okay, everything’s fine” in the face of disappointment. It is posted as a reaction to letdowns you grudgingly make peace with: plans falling through, bad news received with a brave face, small defeats you insist you are fine with. The whole joke lives in the contradiction between the tears and the thumbs up, and the tone is gently self-deprecating and relatable rather than genuinely despairing.

How it spread¶

Crying Cat edits proliferated across Reddit, Twitter, iFunny, and meme pages throughout the late 2010s, with communities like r/sadcats acting as clearinghouses for new variations. The thumbs-up version stood out because it added a second, contradictory gesture to the familiar tearful face, making it especially useful as a “putting on a brave face” reaction. From there it spread as a reaction image and sticker across chat apps and comment sections. Its readability at thumbnail size helped it thrive on mobile, where the tears and the raised thumb both register instantly.

Notable examples & variations¶

• Reacting to plans collapsing while insisting it’s totally fine.
• Captions about accepting bad news with a resigned, watery smile.
• Pairings with self-deprecating “it’s fine, I’m fine” text.
• Other Crying Cat edits that overlay the tearful eyes onto new gestures, characters, and scenes.

Legacy / cultural impact¶

Thumbs Up Crying Cat is one of the most enduring members of the Crying Cat universe, a format flexible enough to absorb almost any emotional gut-punch and soften it into something shareable. It endures because it names a very common feeling — masking real disappointment behind a polite, approving front — with a single, instantly legible image. As reaction culture migrated onto Discord, iMessage, and WhatsApp sticker packs, the thumbs-up cat became a natural fit: a compact, universally understood way to say “this is a disaster and I am choosing to be normal about it.”