About

Masturbating Spider-Man is a series of image macros of an edited screenshot taken from the 60's Spider-Man series, showing Spider-Man sitting on a desk. In similar vein to other advice animals like Bear Grylls, the bottom caption normally remains consistent, being "And I'm Just Sitting Here Masturbating" the one featured on most of the macros.

Origin

The edited image was taken from the 1967 Spider-Man animated series episode titled Electro The Human Lightning Bolt. In the scene, Spider-Man is taking cover under a desk as he battles against Electro (scene in question at 1:40).

The first instance of the picture can be found on a template submitted to Meme Generator on October 18th, 2011, although the image macro did not use the caption "And I'm Just Sitting Here Masturbating" that the fad has come to be known as today^[8]. On August 14th, 2012, Redditor yakkers09 submitted a post titled "This is how I feel when ever I scroll down my newsfeed,"^[3] which featured an image of Spider-Man seated a a desk with the caption "Wow people have such interesting social lives / And I'm just sitting here masturbating" (shown below). Within one month, the post received over 12,800 up votes and 215 comments.

Spread

On the same day, other Redditors began creating image macros with the bottom caption reading “And I’m just sitting here masturbating” on the “Spiderman Desk”^[2] Quickmeme page. On August 31st, Redditor goodbyegun submitted a post to the /r/SpideyMeme^[4] subreddit titled "Obama's AMA", including an image macro with the caption ""Everyone is very interested in Obama's AMA / and I'm just sat there masturbating" (shown below).

On September 3rd, a Quickmeme page titled "Masturbating Spiderman"^[1] was created, which featured the same image of Spider-Man desk image. On the following day, Redditor xwing11 submitted an image macro to the /r/SpideyMeme^[5] subreddit with the caption "Everyone is asleep / and I'm still awake masturbating" (shown below, top, left). On September 14th, Redditor lewk-07 submitted an image macro to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[6] subreddit with the caption “I broke both my wrists / and I’m just sitting here” (shown below, top, middle), to which Redditor SnowingSwede replied “Ask your mom for help, I’m sure she’s willing.” The SnowingSwede comment was made in reference to a controversial AMA thread^[7] created by a man who reportedly had a sexual relationship with his mother after injuring his arms. The image macros continued to spread on Reddit and the "Masturbating spiderman" Quickmeme page accumulated over 600 submissions within two weeks of creation.

On September 11th, 2012, a template variation of the image macro was submitted to Meme Generator^[9]. On September 25th, 2012, Funnyjunk user arognirg posted an image titled Exciting life OC which gained over 55.000 views and 2.486 upvotes within 2 years^[10].

Template

Search Interest

External References