Cocaine Bear

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Cocaine Bear is an image macro built around a photograph of a snarling grizzly bear whose face and fur are dusted with white powder that reads instantly as cocaine but is actually snow. The image usually carries the caption 'I Fucking Love Cocaine' and became a staple of white-dusted-face humor between 2010 and 2012.

Overview

Cocaine Bear is a captioned photograph of a wet grizzly bear roaring with white powder coating its snout, chest, and face1. The powder is actually snow from the original wildlife shot, but the visual gag reads as a bear mid-binge, which is what powered the caption 'I Fucking Love Cocaine'2.

The image sits inside a longer 'white-dusted face' comedy tradition. That trope goes back to the 1983 film Scarface, where Tony Montana's coke-dusted face at his desk became iconic, and to Dave Chappelle's crack-addict character Tyrone Biggums, introduced in early 20033. Cocaine Bear stripped that joke down to a single roaring animal, which made it easy to remix into party invitations, sports blog gags, and celebrity mashups4.

How It Spread

The Cocaine Bear image was submitted to Ebaumsworld on July 19, 20102. In December 2010, sports blog Tauntr published an interactive flash Cocaine Bear poster4. On January 21, 2011, BuzzFeed ran a round-up of 'cocaine animal' images that helped push the format outside dedicated meme boards5.

Actor Charlie Sheen's early-2011 public meltdown gave the format a fresh live target, and vertical comics pairing Sheen with Cocaine Bear circulated widely3. A dedicated 'I Fucking Love Cocaine' Facebook page had picked up 1,542 likes by February 2, 20127. Urban Dictionary entries later cast the bear as an 'apex top predator' party animal, mostly written well after the initial 2010 to 2012 wave6.

How to Use This Meme

The standard Cocaine Bear post is the original bear photograph paired with white impact-font text reading 'I Fucking Love Cocaine' or a first-person bragging variant6. Common riffs swap the bear for another white-dusted subject, like a celebrity, athlete, or another animal, while keeping the same absurd-enthusiasm tone5.

Frequently Asked Questions