Meaning
What does Seal mean?
Seal, also known as Awkward Moment Seal, refer to a popular image macro meme series, unrelated to the Navy Seal Copypasta.
It is primarily used online with captions describing awkward or uncomfortable situations, paired with an image of a “Seal” displaying a shocked face.
Origin
What's the origin of Seal?
The original picture, that is know from the image macro series was first uploaded to Nature’s Pics Online in 2010.
It was first posted on Reddit’s r/aww sub by u/Niccalv2015 on April 15th, 2014.
A captioned image macro version of the “Seal” was uploaded to the r/funny subreddit the next day, by u/Balten.
On April 17th, the meme was posted in the r/AdviceAnimals subreddit.
Spread & Usage
How did Seal spread?
Within a few days after the first “Seal” meme was posted, it was already featured in articles on sites like Mashable, TastefullyOffensive as well as UpRoxx.
The format reached the front page of Reddit, amassing thousands of upvotes within a day, with a Meme Generator being published the next day.
Since then, “Seal” or Awkward Moment Seal has conquered the feed of many websites, ranging from Facebook to 9GAG, Reddit and Twitter.
External resources
- Nature Pics Online – Northern Elephant Seal
- Reddit – Hurumph
- Reddit – I always feel like the creepiest person when…
- Reddit – Squeamish Seal
- Mashable – Meme Watch: Awkward Moment Seal Is Taking The Internet By Storm Because We’ve All Been There
- Meme Generator – Awkward Moment Seal