The true story of the floating man in the hallway

The whole thing started in CIHS Art Teacher Mr. Sullivan’s digital photography class several years ago when he assigned the “Friday Photo Challenge.” The assignment prompt was to “defy gravity.” 

“One of the subjects had to be in motion while the other was floating,” Mr. Sullivan explained.  

There are many different Friday Photo Challenges. “I assign them to choose a title of a Taylor Swift song and take a photo to match the title. A student might choose the song “Sparks Fly” and go to the welding room and take a picture of sparks flying, Sullivan explained. 

According to an online interview of the floating student, the photo was taken in the winter of 2016. According to Reddit, the earliest known usage of the image was posted on April 5th, 2018, by the student running in the photo. The post received more than 50 points (the scorekeeping of comments and/or likes). Ironically, this photo wasn’t even in the running for best photo in Sullivan’s class.

The photo has since become known as Floating Boy Chasing Running Boy, also known as Floating Guy Chasing Running Guy. There has been an entire series of memes spoofing this now-famous meme.

On April 8th, 2018, it was re-posted by an anonymous user on a message board. The image, which was labeled “Larry_Breaches_Containment,” is a reference to the SCP Foundation fictional wiki and captioned “*blocks your path*.

That day, the image was re-posted in another thread about the SCP Foundation. In six months, the thread received more than 260 points (99% upvoted).

On July 18th, Tumblr [3] posted an object-labeled variation of the meme in which the jumping boy is labeled “Baby boomers that don’t understand inflation,” and the running boy is labeled “Millennial Cashiers.” The post received more than 113,000 notes in three months.

The following month, on August 14th, Redditor[4] blueberrybrown posted a version in which the floating boy is labeled “1/10 dentists” and the running boy is labeled “toothpaste brands.” The post received over 1,100 points (95% upvoted) in two months.

A similar version of the meme, in which the floating boy is labeled “Colgate” and the running boy is labeled “1 out of 10 dentists who don’t recommend Colgate,” was posted in subreddit on September 26th, 2018, by Redditor[5] ky4n1te. The post, originally by @huncho.macho,[6] received more than 26,000 points (95% upvoted) and 100 comments.

From that point on, it became one of the most well-known memes and one of the most parodied memes.

Sullivan explained that technically, it’s not a great photo, but it became a viral sensation when somebody added words.

So, how does this meme relate to pop culture? Sullivan explained that if you came across this image while scrolling, it likely impacted you for about four seconds before moving on to the next unknown image that was about to roll up on your screen. 

“I think that our society is drowning so much in social media imagery that we don’t take the time to fully process one idea before we scroll on to the next thing. Our emotions and feelings take the most toll from this type of exposure,” Sullivan said.