Expanding Brain meme generator

How the Expanding Brain format works

1. 1Line 1 (top, dim brain): the ordinary, sensible version.
2. 2Line 2: a slightly cleverer or fancier version.
3. 3Line 3: an over-the-top version.
4. 4Line 4 (bottom, cosmic brain): the absurd endpoint of the escalation.

Example captions

• 1Using a calculator2Doing it in your head3Estimating and moving on4Asking the group chat
• 1Setting one alarm2Setting three alarms3Setting alarms in 5-minute steps4Sleeping through all of them
• 1Reading the terms2Scrolling to the bottom3Clicking accept immediately4Being the lawyer who wrote them

About the Expanding Brain meme

Expanding Brain (also called Galaxy Brain) is a four-panel format in which a human head becomes progressively more illuminated — from a dim brain to a glowing, cosmic one — beside four lines of text. It took off in early 2017 through a joke about increasingly pretentious ways to write “who” (who, whom, whomst, whomst'd), and the escalation structure stuck.

The genius of the template is that the “enlightenment” is ironic. The lines go from a normal take to a supposedly galaxy-brained one, and the funniest versions make the final step either gloriously stupid or a genuinely unhinged conclusion that follows from the earlier ones. Because it has four boxes it is one of the few templates that rewards a bit of build-up.

Also known as

Galaxy Brain, Big brain meme, Whomst'd, Brain expanding meme

Text boxes

4

Blank size

600 × 848 · blank template

Origin

Know Your Meme