40 meme ideas for when you're stuck

The blank prompt box is the hardest part. Once you have a situation, the joke is usually already in it; the template and the wording are the easy bit. So this is a list of situations, not jokes. Each one has a prompt you can paste into the generator as it is, and a template that tends to fit. If you only want the line and not the picture, the same prompt works on the caption generator.

Two rules that make every idea below work better:

1. Be specific. "Work is annoying" gets you a generic meme. "My manager booked a sync for 5 pm on a Friday" gets you a good one. Name the exact thing.
2. Say who the meme is about. "Me" and "my" put you in the picture. "Nobody" and "everyone" make it observational. Both are fine, but pick one.

The picture under each heading is what the generator returned for the first prompt in that group, template pinned, nothing edited. The templates linked here are the ones with their own page on this site. The generator itself has close to two hundred, and it picks for you if you leave the template on auto.

Work and meetings

1. The meeting that was an email. Prompt: "sitting in a 45-minute meeting that could have been two sentences in Slack". Try it on Hide the Pain Harold.
2. The reply-all. Prompt: "someone hits reply-all to say thanks and now 300 people are in the thread". This Is Fine suits it.
3. The "quick question". Prompt: "a coworker says quick question and then shares their screen". Good on Left Exit 12 Off Ramp: the exit is "actually quick".
4. Friday at 4:55. Prompt: "my manager scheduling a sync at 4:55 on a Friday". Woman Yelling at Cat works: the cat is you, unbothered, already logged off in spirit.
5. The optimistic estimate. Prompt: "estimating a task at two hours and it is now day three". Gru's Plan is built for plans that fall apart in panel four.

Tech and developers

6. It works and nobody knows why. Prompt: "my code works and I have no idea why so I am not touching it". A classic on Expanding Brain with the top tier being "close the laptop".
7. Works on my machine. Prompt: "the bug only happens in production and never on my laptop". Is This a Pigeon? with "is this a feature?".
8. The one-line fix. Prompt: "spent four hours debugging and the fix was a missing semicolon". Disaster Girl if you want to own it.
9. Friday deploy. Prompt: "deploying to production at 5 pm on a Friday". Any template with a bad decision in it: Two Buttons with "deploy now" versus "deploy Monday".
10. The tutorial that skips the step you need. Prompt: "following a tutorial and step 4 says now simply configure the thing that took me all week". One Does Not Simply was made for the word "simply".

Food and cooking

11. Shopping hungry. Prompt: "buying groceries while hungry and coming home with four kinds of cheese and no dinner". Drake: rejecting the list, approving the cheese.
12. The dog supervisor. Prompt: "my dog waiting under my feet for me to drop food while I cook". Works on your own photo of the dog. Use "My image" on the home page.
13. "I'm not hungry" and then eating your fries. Prompt: "my partner says they don't want anything then eats half my fries". Distracted Boyfriend: their meal, your fries.
14. The recipe intro. Prompt: "scrolling past 2,000 words about someone's childhood summer to find the amount of flour". Mocking SpongeBob for the blog voice.
15. Meal prep Sunday. Prompt: "meal-prepping five identical lunches and ordering takeout by Tuesday". Gru's Plan again; it fits any plan with a Tuesday.

Money and adulting

16. The subscription you forgot. Prompt: "finding a subscription on my statement that I have been paying for since 2023". Hide the Pain Harold.
17. Payday maths. Prompt: "getting paid, paying rent, and being broke again within the hour". Always Has Been: "wait, it's all rent?"
18. Treat yourself. Prompt: "telling myself I deserve a treat for doing the bare minimum". Drake: rejecting the savings account, approving the treat.
19. Adult purchase excitement. Prompt: "getting genuinely excited about a new vacuum cleaner". Expanding Brain, where the top tier is a cordless one.
20. The "free" trial. Prompt: "setting a reminder to cancel the free trial and ignoring the reminder". This Is Fine.

Sleep, health, and the gym

21. One more episode. Prompt: "me choosing between sleep and one more episode at 1 am". Two Buttons: the sweating is the point.
22. Back at the gym. Prompt: "first day back at the gym after six months". Also the best-performing prompt on the caption generator, where we used it as an example.
23. Sleep schedule. Prompt: "fixing my sleep schedule by going to bed at 3 am instead of 4". Expanding Brain in reverse: each step is worse.
24. The step count. Prompt: "walking laps around the kitchen at 11:58 pm to hit 10,000 steps". Disaster Girl or your own photo.
25. Water intake. Prompt: "drinking my daily water in one go at 9 pm and calling it hydration". Change My Mind with "that counts".

Friends and group chats

26. The trip that never happens. Prompt: "group chat planning a trip that will never happen". Try Gru's Plan; panel three is "nobody books anything".
27. Left on read. Prompt: "sending a long message and getting a thumbs up back". Woman Yelling at Cat.
28. The friend who is always late. Prompt: "my friend texting 'on my way' while still in the shower". Is This a Pigeon?: "is this on my way?"
29. The plan-canceller. Prompt: "the relief when the other person cancels plans first". Drake: rejecting "going out", approving "they cancelled".
30. Birthday reminders. Prompt: "finding out it was someone's birthday from the group chat at 11 pm". Hide the Pain Harold typing "happy birthday!!" late.

Students and studying

31. The night before. Prompt: "starting an assignment the night before that was set six weeks ago". This Is Fine is the whole genre.
32. The group project. Prompt: "group project where I did everything and everyone got the same grade". Distracted Boyfriend or Woman Yelling at Cat.
33. The syllabus surprise. Prompt: "finding out the exam is cumulative on the day of the exam". Always Has Been.
34. Reading week. Prompt: "planning to study over reading week and studying zero minutes". Gru's Plan.
35. The 8 am lecture. Prompt: "signing up for an 8 am lecture in September and regretting it in October". Two Buttons: "attend" versus "watch the recording at 2x".

Everyday small chaos

36. The parking spot. Prompt: "driving around the car park for ten minutes and parking next to the entrance". Disaster Girl.
37. The dish that "needs to soak". Prompt: "leaving a pan to soak, which means never washing it". Change My Mind: "soaking is a form of washing".
38. Unread notifications. Prompt: "having 4,000 unread emails and feeling fine about it". This Is Fine, obviously.
39. The weather app. Prompt: "the weather app saying 0 percent chance of rain while I am standing in the rain". Is This a Pigeon?: "is this 0 percent?"
40. "I'll remember that." Prompt: "not writing something down because I will definitely remember it". Mocking SpongeBob quoting yourself.

If none of the forty are yours

Take any of them and swap the noun. "My dog waiting for food" becomes "my cat waiting for the tap to be turned on". "8 am lecture" becomes "6 am shift". The generator writes six versions per prompt, so you can be vague about the wording and specific about the situation. That is the only trick.

When you have the line but not the picture, the caption generator gives you ten one-liners without a template. When you have the picture but not the line, upload it with "My image" on the home page and describe what is in it. And if you want to write the whole thing yourself, every template page has a blank version you can type on.