Meaning
What does Juan mean?
Juan (or horse on balcony) is an absurd meme consisting of a heavily pixelated image of a horse standing on a balcony and a bottom text spelling “juan.”
Prior to the earning of its name, the balcony horse picture featured in various image macros and photoshop edits, but after somebody gave the name “Juan” to it, the meme became its own thing and the format started to spread as a form of exploitable.
Origin
What's the origin of Juan?
The original image of the horse standing on the balcony surfaced on Imgur in 2014, uploaded by an anonymous user who captioned the image with the following text: “Only in Malta”.
Later it was revealed by internet folk that horse owners sometimes try to save their animals from thieves by locking them out on balconies, but it has not been confirmed that Juan ended up on a balcony for the same reason.
Spread & Usage
How did Juan spread?
The first instance when the bottom text was added to the image of the original photo is believed to have been an Instagram post on the page @graphic.design.is.my.passion in 2020.
The meme went viral on the internet, mostly appearing on various Reddit threads like r/memes, and it was also frequently featured on Tumblr, Instagram and Facebook meme pages as well.
External resources
- Mirror.co.uk – Horse kept on balcony so it is not stolen by thieves
- Reddit.com – r/memes