What is A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish?

It is a three-panel image macro where a man wishes on a shooting star and the star turns the opposite direction to avoid granting the wish.

What does A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish mean?

The template is a punchline about denial, using the star's exit to reject the wish text in the middle panel, often a self-deprecating line like "I wish I was happy".

How do you use A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish?

Keep the first and third panels as they are, and edit the middle panel to whatever wish fits your joke, from mental-health humor to fandom-specific asks.

Is A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish still popular?

It peaked on Reddit in March 2020 after a /r/memes post cleared 35,000 points in a day, and it has stayed in circulation as a reusable template since.

A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish

Q: Where did A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish come from?

The earliest known version was posted by Redditor JohnnySparkxs on September 8th, 2019, in the /r/pokemonmasters subreddit with the wish "I wish I could scout Blue".

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Published August 3, 2026

A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish is a three-panel image macro from September 2019 where a man wishes on a shooting star and the star U-turns to escape granting it. The format lets editors swap any wish into the middle panel, and Reddit repostings in early 2020 pushed it well past its Pokémon-fandom origin.

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Overview

A Shooting Star Rejecting Wish is a three-panel image macro built around a small piece of visual comedy. The first panel shows a man spotting a shooting star, the second panel displays the wish he makes, and the third panel shows the star abruptly turning the opposite direction to escape the request1. The joke works as a punchline: the star literally refuses to grant whatever the wisher wants.

The format took off because the middle panel is a blank canvas for any punchline, from self-deprecating one-liners about happiness2 to niche fandom requests tied to specific video games3. Editors swap in whatever wish fits their audience, while the first and third panels stay untouched.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

JohnnySparkxs

Date

2019

The earliest known post came from Redditor JohnnySparkxs on September 8th, 2019, in the /r/pokemonmasters subreddit1. In that version, the man says "Look, a falling star" before wishing "I wish I could scout Blue," a nod to the Pokémon Masters mobile game's gacha pull for the character Blue. The post pulled in over 570 points with a 98% upvote ratio1.

How It Spread

Nineteen days after the Pokémon Masters original, on September 27th, 2019, Facebook user ab0rteddreams posted a version outside the gaming niche with the wish "I wish I was happy" and the caption "lolfuck you," pulling in more than 980 reactions and 490 shares2. The next day, Twitter user @ItsJustJ0rd swapped in a wish for a Little Nightmares 2 level creator, showing how fast editors were remixing the middle panel3.

The "I wish I was happy" cut migrated to Reddit on October 8th, 2019, when javaalien reposted it and earned over 2,400 points with a 91% upvote ratio4. Momentum built through early 2020: on February 4th, Redditor M4tik_ posted a variation where the star explodes and the man says "Finally," collecting more than 22,900 points in about a month5.

The template hit peak Reddit reach on March 4th, 2020, when RetardGoblin69 shared a version to /r/memes that pulled over 35,000 points in under 24 hours6. Variations kept spinning off across the site afterward.

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How to Use This Meme

Editors typically leave the first and third panels untouched, keeping the man's spot and the star's later U-turn intact. The middle panel is where the wish text goes, and the common convention is to make the ask specific enough to earn the rejection, whether that's a self-deprecating one-liner or a niche fandom pull request5.