About

Pondering My Orb, also known as Ponder Orb, refers to a series of exploitables that feature a drawing of a sagely figure looking into a crystal ball. After being posted to Twitter in October 2021 with the caption "pondering my orb," users online edited the picture to feature different characters or used the image in other meme templates. In late November 2021, the meme saw a further resurgence and appeared across social media and the internet more prominently than the month prior.

Origin

The original picture used in the meme comes from a gamebook that featured the artwork by English historical and fantasy illustrator Angus Mcbride on its cover, called Middle-Earth Quest: A Spy In Isengard, which was published in 1988 for a role-playing game based on The Lord of the Rings (seen below, left).^[5]

The picture was then again used on the cover of the Valar & Maiar, a 1993 supplement for Middle-earth Role Playing (shown below, right).^[2]

On October 15th, 2021, Twitter user @thatsgoodweb^[1] posted an image of a sagely figure looking into a crystal ball, captioning the picture, "pondering my orb." The post gained over 3,300 retweets and 21,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

After the @thatsgoodweb post, memers on Twitter and Reddit began making jokes with the image by either editing it to feature different characters or adding it to pre-existing templates. For example, on November 2nd, 2021, Imgur user kickmyballsrealhard^[3] posted an edit of the meme using the Boy and Girl Texting template, gaining over 75,000 views in one day (shown below, left). On October 21st, Redditor wahirsch edited the image to feature AngriestPat, gaining over 130 points in the /r/TwoBestFriendsPlay^[4] subreddit (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References