Dawson Crying

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Dawson Crying is a reaction image and GIF pulled from the season 3 finale of the WB teen drama Dawson's Creek, showing James Van Der Beek's character breaking into an exaggerated ugly-cry face. First airing on May 24, 2000, the clip spread across blogs by the late 2000s and became a go-to reply for signaling absurd, comically overblown sadness online.

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Overview

Dawson Crying, also called James Van Der Beek Crying or Crying Dawson, is a reaction image and GIF taken from the WB teen drama Dawson's Creek. People drop the image into replies and comment threads to signal exaggerated, self-pitying sorrow, usually about something minor like a canceled show or a rough Monday1.

The clip catches Van Der Beek's face crumpling as tears fall while his hair stirs in the creekside breeze3. TV critic Sarah D. Bunting told Vox the image sits 'on the Mount Rushmore of GIFs' for the way it delivers absurd, hyperbolic tragedy in three seconds1.

The Dawson Crying GIF has held its place in reaction shot rotations since the late 2000s. Van Der Beek himself embraced the joke and cooperated with a Funny or Die project built on top of it5.

How It Spread

By the late 2000s the still image was turning up on personal blogs as a header photo for pop culture posts. On August 19, 2008, the site I Will Dare used it above a ranking of the best Dawson's Creek episodes. Comedian Becky Yamamoto followed on December 8, 2009 with a post titled 'There's no crying in life' that led with the same photo.

The image jumped platforms on January 3, 2011, when Funny or Die teamed up with Van Der Beek to launch jamesvandermemes.com, a site collecting additional reaction faces including a fresh GIF of the actor recreating his own cry. Tumblr user TheAlexSimms posted side-by-side GIFs of the original scene and the recreation the following day, and the post pulled in more than 3,000 notes over the next seven years.

HuffPost picked up the meme in 2012, running a piece introducing '1990s Problems,' an image macro pairing the crying face with grievances unique to a 90s childhood. Van Der Beek's Dawson's Creek co-star Joshua Jackson revived the joke on August 12, 2018 with an Instagram post pairing his own crying face from The Affair with the original Dawson tears, captioned 'I'm coming for your crown @vanderjames.' The post pulled more than 50,000 likes within two days.

How to Use This Meme

The Dawson Crying image typically gets deployed as a reply to something mildly annoying or trivially sad, mocking the poster or the situation for taking a minor blow too hard. Common conventions include captioning the still with a small first-world problem, or dropping the GIF under a news headline about a celebrity breakup, a canceled TV show, or a tiny inconvenience. The point is comic overreaction, matching a three-second freakout to a five-second setback.

Cultural Impact

Van Der Beek talked openly about the meme and never pushed back against it. In a 2018 Entertainment Weekly interview marking the show's 20th anniversary, he said, 'It's hilarious to me that you can work for six years on a show, 120-something hours, and it gets boiled down to three seconds. It's a perfect way-of-the-internet'. Van Der Beek died in February 2026 at age 48, less than three years after his colorectal cancer diagnosis, and the Boston Globe pointed to Crying Dawson as one of his lasting cultural marks.

Fun Facts

- The crying moment was not scripted. Van Der Beek improvised it on set after three seasons of playing the character, according to Bustle

- HuffPost's broken URL pages once served the Dawson Crying image as the 404 art, per Vox

- Van Der Beek told Entertainment Weekly he loves the meme, calling it 'a perfect way-of-the-internet,' per Boston Globe reporting

- Vox TV critic Sarah D. Bunting put the image 'on the Mount Rushmore of GIFs'

- Blogger Becky Yamamoto used the image in a 2009 post about her own tendency to cry easily

Derivatives & Variations

jamesvandermemes.com, a Funny or Die project featuring extra Van Der Beek reaction faces alongside a fresh GIF of the actor recreating his own cry[1]

'1990s Problems,' an image macro built on top of the crying face, pairing it with grievances specific to a 90s childhood[5]

Joshua Jackson's August 12, 2018 Instagram post pairing his own on-camera cry from The Affair with the original Dawson scene[6]

Frequently Asked Questions

Dawson Crying

2000reaction imageclassic

Dawson Crying is a reaction image and GIF pulled from the season 3 finale of the WB teen drama Dawson's Creek, showing James Van Der Beek's character breaking into an exaggerated ugly-cry face. First airing on May 24, 2000, the clip spread across blogs by the late 2000s and became a go-to reply for signaling absurd, comically overblown sadness online.

reaction memes gif memes celebrity reaction memes late 2000s memes tv show memes

Overview

Dawson Crying, also called James Van Der Beek Crying or Crying Dawson, is a reaction image and GIF taken from the WB teen drama Dawson's Creek. People drop the image into replies and comment threads to signal exaggerated, self-pitying sorrow, usually about something minor like a canceled show or a rough Monday.

The clip catches Van Der Beek's face crumpling as tears fall while his hair stirs in the creekside breeze. TV critic Sarah D. Bunting told Vox the image sits 'on the Mount Rushmore of GIFs' for the way it delivers absurd, hyperbolic tragedy in three seconds.

The Dawson Crying GIF has held its place in reaction shot rotations since the late 2000s. Van Der Beek himself embraced the joke and cooperated with a Funny or Die project built on top of it.

How It Spread

By the late 2000s the still image was turning up on personal blogs as a header photo for pop culture posts. On August 19, 2008, the site I Will Dare used it above a ranking of the best Dawson's Creek episodes. Comedian Becky Yamamoto followed on December 8, 2009 with a post titled 'There's no crying in life' that led with the same photo.

The image jumped platforms on January 3, 2011, when Funny or Die teamed up with Van Der Beek to launch jamesvandermemes.com, a site collecting additional reaction faces including a fresh GIF of the actor recreating his own cry. Tumblr user TheAlexSimms posted side-by-side GIFs of the original scene and the recreation the following day, and the post pulled in more than 3,000 notes over the next seven years.

HuffPost picked up the meme in 2012, running a piece introducing '1990s Problems,' an image macro pairing the crying face with grievances unique to a 90s childhood. Van Der Beek's Dawson's Creek co-star Joshua Jackson revived the joke on August 12, 2018 with an Instagram post pairing his own crying face from The Affair with the original Dawson tears, captioned 'I'm coming for your crown @vanderjames.' The post pulled more than 50,000 likes within two days.

How to Use This Meme

The Dawson Crying image typically gets deployed as a reply to something mildly annoying or trivially sad, mocking the poster or the situation for taking a minor blow too hard. Common conventions include captioning the still with a small first-world problem, or dropping the GIF under a news headline about a celebrity breakup, a canceled TV show, or a tiny inconvenience. The point is comic overreaction, matching a three-second freakout to a five-second setback.

Cultural Impact

Van Der Beek talked openly about the meme and never pushed back against it. In a 2018 Entertainment Weekly interview marking the show's 20th anniversary, he said, 'It's hilarious to me that you can work for six years on a show, 120-something hours, and it gets boiled down to three seconds. It's a perfect way-of-the-internet'. Van Der Beek died in February 2026 at age 48, less than three years after his colorectal cancer diagnosis, and the Boston Globe pointed to Crying Dawson as one of his lasting cultural marks.

Fun Facts

- The crying moment was not scripted. Van Der Beek improvised it on set after three seasons of playing the character, according to Bustle

- HuffPost's broken URL pages once served the Dawson Crying image as the 404 art, per Vox

- Van Der Beek told Entertainment Weekly he loves the meme, calling it 'a perfect way-of-the-internet,' per Boston Globe reporting

- Vox TV critic Sarah D. Bunting put the image 'on the Mount Rushmore of GIFs'

- Blogger Becky Yamamoto used the image in a 2009 post about her own tendency to cry easily

Derivatives & Variations

jamesvandermemes.com, a Funny or Die project featuring extra Van Der Beek reaction faces alongside a fresh GIF of the actor recreating his own cry[1]

'1990s Problems,' an image macro built on top of the crying face, pairing it with grievances specific to a 90s childhood[5]

Joshua Jackson's August 12, 2018 Instagram post pairing his own on-camera cry from The Affair with the original Dawson scene[6]

Frequently Asked Questions