The source photograph was shot in mid-2015 on Carrer Nou, 31 in the city of Girona, Catalonia, Spain5. Antonio Guillem, a 45-year-old professional stock photographer from Barcelona, took the image as part of a session exploring the concept of infidelity "in a playful and fun way"6. He had been working with the same three models for some time, though one of the models stopped working with him about a year before the meme blew up1.

Guillem uploaded the image to stock photo databases including iStock and Shutterstock with the caption "Disloyal man walking with his girlfriend and looking amazed at another seductive girl"5. The two models who remained part of the team go by the stage names "Laura" (the girlfriend in the blue shirt) and "Mario" (the boyfriend)12. Laura later described the shoot, saying: "When people saw us simulate those scenes in the street, they stopped to look and laugh and, in my case that I had to have a more serious face, I had a hard time to keeping it"5.

The earliest known meme usage appeared on January 30, 2017, when the image was posted to a Turkish Facebook group called "Prog Düşmanlarına Verilen Müthiş Cevaplar" (roughly "Great Answers to Prog Enemies"), labeling the man as Phil Collins being lured away from prog rock by pop music4. The creator of that post later said they were inspired by the Turkish political meme page "Siyasettin," which posted its own version the same day4.

The meme's influence on internet culture goes beyond a single viral moment. Slate credited it as the key driver behind the object labeling trend that defined late 2010s meme culture, where simple text labels on images replaced the Impact-font top-text/bottom-text format of the advice animal era11.

Guillem acknowledged he did not profit directly from the meme's popularity. His best-selling stock photos moved over 6,000 copies per year, while the meme photo sold only about 700 times annually8. "Memes haven't given us any kind of economic profit, because most of the images haven't been sold on the microstock agencies," he told Wired. "They are being used without the proper license on those agencies"6. He took a measured stance on copyright enforcement, saying he would not pursue legal action except in cases where images were used "in a pejorative, offensive or any way that can harm the models or me"1.

Nathan Heller of The New Yorker wrote that "the delight of the Distracted Boyfriend meme was not unlike the perverse pleasure taken by Distracted Boyfriend himself: it allowed America to turn its attention away from much more important commitments"5. Paper magazine listed it as one of the memes that defined 20175. The format appeared on protest signs at the 2018 "Enough! National School Walkout" against gun violence5. In November 2020, French clothing company Jules used it in a commercial5.

The Hungarian government's use of the same models in a pro-natalist advertising campaign in 2019 drew international attention, with BBC and The Guardian covering the irony of a couple famous for representing infidelity being used to promote family values1413.

The Distracted Boyfriend format did not peak and vanish like most viral memes. Instead, it kept generating new chapters well into 2018 and beyond.

In late October 2017, internet users found a Shutterstock image from the same photo series where the roles were reversed: the girlfriend was now checking out a man passing by2. Redditor toastr posted it alongside the original with the caption "The tables have turned," scoring over 25,600 upvotes in a day4. The Daily Dot covered the "Distracted Girlfriend" discovery, calling it "gender equality" for the meme world2.

January 2018 brought an unexpected crossover. A teaser image for Mission: Impossible - Fallout showed Henry Cavill standing between two people in a composition strikingly similar to the meme. Twitter user @synistere created a Distracted Boyfriend parody of the image, and Tom Cruise himself tweeted the original still. In the replies, the most popular mashup came from @Malforian, pulling in over 1,700 retweets4.

In March 2018, Slate published a piece crediting Distracted Boyfriend as one of the most influential memes in spreading the object labeling trend11. Adam Downer, a Know Your Meme editor, told Slate that while labeled memes existed before, "I think that one really brought the style to popular culture"11. The format inspired a wave of imitators: the trumpet boy, Lisa Simpson coffee mug, car swerving toward the exit ramp, and dozens more11.

On April 15, 2018, the meme won "Meme of the Year" at the 10th annual Shorty Awards, beating out Galaxy Brain, Right in Front of My Salad, Roll Safe, The Floor Is Lava, and Tiny Trump4. The following day, Twitter user @ELXGANZA posted a Joshua Reynolds painting from 1761, "David Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy," calling it "the 18th-century equivalent" of the meme3. The painting shows actor David Garrick being pulled between two women symbolizing Comedy and Tragedy in a composition eerily similar to Guillem's photograph. The Tate Modern, where the painting hangs, calls it "one of the most important of [Reynolds'] entire career"3.

Historical antecedents kept surfacing. A 1916 Chicago Tribune cartoon by Frank King showed a woman scolding her husband with "what you lookin' at Ezry? Shame on You!" as he ogled a passing woman, a near-identical joke9. A 1950 photo from Leatherneck magazine depicted a female naval recruit turning away from a sailor to gaze at a staff sergeant, going viral on Reddit as a military spin on the format7.

In July 2018, a photo taken in Venice went viral because it accidentally recreated the meme: a woman eating ice cream with a couple holding hands visible in the background, the man clearly distracted10. In October 2018, a wedding photo outtake on the "bi irl" subreddit showed a groom seemingly distracted by a muscled man emerging from the surf behind his bride, earning its own wave of labeled versions16.

The meme made the jump to institutional use in 2019 when the Hungarian government ran a pro-family advertising campaign using a different Guillem stock photo of the same "Laura" and "Mario" models, this time shown as a happy couple on a couch. The campaign promoted Viktor Orbán's "family protection action plan" offering tax breaks for mothers of four or more children14. Sharp-eyed Hungarians immediately recognized the models from the infidelity meme, turning the whole campaign into a joke14.

That same year, the New York Times published the meme format in its Business section to illustrate the proposed Renault-Fiat Chrysler merger, labeling the boyfriend "Renault," the other woman "Fiat Chrysler," and the girlfriend "Nissan"15. NY Mag noted the paper had arrived in "the year 2017" with its meme usage15.

In December 2022, Rainbolt, the GeoGuessr star, uploaded an Instagram video identifying the exact Girona location where Guillem took the photo, receiving over 533,000 likes in three weeks4. By 2024, users were animating the still image with AI tools like Stability AI's Stable Video and Runway, creating short clips imagining what happened after the frozen moment18.