Draft:Forlorn Ant meme

The Forlorn Ant meme, also called "Sad Ant with Bindle," "Homeless Ant," and "How It Feels To Ant," is a reaction image, exploitable image, and internet meme depicting a cartoon ant carrying a bindle (also commonly called a knapsack) over his shoulder. It is used by internet users to represent the action of being "sent packing," or something similarly disheartening, connoting feelings of sadness, rejection, unrequited affection, or dejectedness, among others. Since its inception from an ad for a pest control company, the original image has been substantially altered by users to reflect their own personal experiences and interpretations of the image, spawning legions of variations, reproductions, and modifications.

Origin

The original image was taken from an advertisement for a Virginia-based pest control company, Zap Pest Control. The original file, titled "sad bug with knapsack," was originally posted to their now-deleted website, but was also posted on Facebook on July 11th, 2013. The original image depicted the ant in the foreground dejectedly walking away from a distant house, presumably after being kicked out. In future iterations of the meme, this additional imagery is cropped out, preserving only the figure of the ant.

The earliest use of the image in a meme was by Twitter user @roxylalondeswag, captioned "Homophobes reading "homophobes dni" at the end of your seizure inducing danganropa filled carrd." posted on April 12th, 2021. A screenshot of the Tweet was reposted to Tumblr by user @beachnet on the same day.

Spread

After some time, the use of the ant image with different captions began to pick up, solidifying its transition into an exploitable image, first on Tumblr, and later on Instagram.

On June 20th, 2021, the same image, but with a different caption, was posted to Tumblr by now-deleted user, @tonysopranobignaturals, depicting Xi Jinping's hypothetical reaction to a, presumably helpless, "Stop Communist China" petition. Several months later, on November 28th, 2021, Tumblr user @zampl posted the image with the caption, "seen a person’s blog that had 'p--n bot' under the do not follow if criteria………king they can’t read💔." After several users in the comment section expressed interest in the image used in the meme in the comment section, user @muck-raker responded to the thread with a description, "[ID: a sad ant with a bindle, presumably originally from an ad for pest control]" to which the original poster, @zampl, subsequently deemed the occasion, "sad ant with a bindle Monday:(." This post had considerable engagement compared to earlier postings, with nearly 90,000 notes within a year, and spawned a small trend, "Sad Ant With A Bindle Monday," referencing the original comment.

The first public post on Instagram that included the image was nearly two years after the first recorded use on Tumblr, on March 23rd, 2023 by Instagram user @girlfromwebsite. The image was the first in a carousel post, containing the caption, "this is how i feel when i ask my dad for money" garnering nearly 13,000 likes in the first two months. It was later reposted by the same user on April 22nd, 2023, with a different caption, "how it feels asking someone to hang out first." as the second post in a carousel.

Variations

The image circulated widely, acquiring new meanings and interpretations, as well as several notable variations in format and figural elaboration. Incessant production, interaction, circulation, and consumption of the image has lent itself to a constantly-evolving formal execution. These executions are also greatly influenced by social identity and aspects of social reproduction, as a result of their location in cyberspace.

"How it feels" Ant

Based on the modified version of the image from @girlfromwebsite's posts, social media users began to repost the image while preserving the "How it feels..." text, re-captioning it with their own personal experiences of common disheartening, discouraging, or demoralizing situations, from the mundane and relatable, to the highly specific.

On April 27th, 2023, Instagram user @iamdelusional_ posted a variation on this image with the caption, "how it feels walking to the car when you're getting picked up." which garnered nearly 63,000 likes in 12 days. There are many, many similar examples with this template on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.

Happy Ant

In another modified version of the meme, the ant is shown content and happy, with his hands out in front of him as if perhaps caught mid-dance. His bindle is gone, presumably because he has not been displaced.

The first known tweet including this modified image was by Twitter user @henryispathetic on July 16th, 2023, in which the modified ant is compared to a modified version of another meme, No Arms No Legs Girl In Hospital, which originally depicted a paraplegic girl laying in a hospital bed, but was modified to depict a positive turn of fate. It includes the caption, "me allegro por ellas," or, "I am happy for them."

By June 2023, it had spread to English-speaking Twitter, with hundreds of examples, including a post by Twitter user @10bands100bands on July 19th 2023, captioned "He's so f**king back," referencing another meme catchphrase that indicates a flipping of circumstances, or the post by @thehappysmiler's a day later, of the same modified photo with the caption, "Me when it turns out ok in the end."

This version of the image has also been edited, this time to appear unhappy once more. A variation by Tumblr user @skittypilled preserves the hands in front and the lack of a bindle, but restores the original, forlorn expression to the ant's face, captioning the image, "When you're in the club freaking it sensitive style," or the familiar sensation of trying to have a good time when you'e not in the mood or comfortable.

Fan art

The recognizable figuration makes the meme a very popular choice for fan art, from movies to TV shows, to video games and digital series. The popularity of the image on Tumblr and Twitter makes it particularly attractive to "stan" communities and subcultures, whose members frequently use pseudonyms to digitally support their favorite celebrities or fictional characters. These communities may also be aligned with intersectional identities, especially gender and sexuality, as evidenced by prominent use of the transgender flag in various elaborations (note the "Butch" pin on the Ant Prom meme").

Miscellaneous variations

Other variations of the meme have modified the elaboration of the meme in countless ways, such as by switching the role of the ant and the bindle or by expressing the ant with a different formal elaboration, replacing the bindle with another object, such as a medieval flail weapon for example, as well as changing the meme format, such as the template that organizes two figures chronologically, among others. These expressions may often dialogue with other memes, such as the Gangster Spongebob meme, or the aforementioned No Arms No Legs Girl in Hospital meme.