# Girls Laughing
Girls Laughing is a 4chan reaction image format that started in August 2009, built around stock photos of young women cracking up together. Posters use it as a reply that treats the OP's story as pathetic, framing the women as gossiping about him. The base Getty photo later spawned an offshoot called Vindictive Girls.
## Overview
Girls Laughing is a reaction image series showing two or more young women cracking up together, posted on imageboards as a reply meant to make the original poster feel pathetic[4]. The joke stages the women as retelling the OP's story to friends and laughing at him, so it lands nastier than a plain Facepalm because the humiliation is framed as social gossip rather than personal disapproval.
Common versions of the format use stock photos of women mid-laugh, illustrated female Pokémon characters for /vp/ threads[3], or the party-dress trio of three women that later fueled the Vindictive Girls offshoot[1]. The reaction is almost always paired with 4chan-style greentext captions that mock the original post.
## How It Spread
After starting on /tv/, the format spread to other 4chan boards including /r9k/, /sp/, /b/, and /vp/, with each board bending the joke to its subject matter, including illustrated female Pokémon character variants on /vp/[3]. The base image also got uploaded to Meme Generator under the alternate name 'Laughing Whores' and to Quickmeme as 'Laughing Girls,' turning the reaction image into a proper macro template[4].
A notable offshoot called 'Vindictive Girls' broke out in April 2012, built around a stock photo of three women in party dresses laughing together[1]. Captions typically opened with 'So Then I Told Him' or 'And Then I Said…,' a setup borrowed from a parallel 'laughing men' macro, and punchlines centered on the women lying to or gaming their boyfriends[2]. Within days, compilations ran on humor sites including Pleated Jeans[1], Izismile[2], eBaum's World, and Damn Cool Pictures, giving the offshoot a much wider reach than the original 4chan reply pattern.
## How to Use
Typical Girls Laughing posts are replies, not standalone macros[3]. Post an image of laughing women under an OP that describes some embarrassing or naive personal story, so the picture reads as the women retelling that story as gossip. Vindictive Girls follow a stricter caption pattern, with the top line often set as 'So Then I Told Him' and the bottom line landing a punchline where the woman brags about outsmarting her boyfriend[2], a template widely collected on humor sites like Pleated Jeans[1].
## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Girls Laughing?
Girls Laughing is a reaction image series built on stock photos of young women laughing together, posted on 4chan and other imageboards as a reply that treats the original poster's story as pathetic[3].
### Where did Girls Laughing come from?
Girls Laughing started as a 4chan reply pattern in 2009, and its offshoot Vindictive Girls landed on humor sites like Pleated Jeans[1] and Izismile[2] in April 2012.
### What does Girls Laughing mean?
Posting the photo frames the women as gossiping about the OP's story to their friends, so the message is that the story is embarrassing enough to be retold as a joke[3].
### How do you use Girls Laughing?
Reply to a thread with a stock photo of women laughing; for the Vindictive Girls variant, the top caption typically opens with 'So Then I Told Him' and the punchline has the woman bragging about tricking her boyfriend[2].
### Is Girls Laughing still popular?
Girls Laughing was most active from 2009 through 2013, with its Vindictive Girls offshoot getting wide compilation coverage on humor sites like Pleated Jeans[1] and Izismile[2] during its peak.
## References
1. [https://pleated-jeans.com/2012/04/11/best-of-the-vindictive-girls-meme-16-pics/]()
2. [https://izismile.com/2012/04/12/the_funniest_of_the_vindictive_girls_meme_16_pics.html]()
3. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130619112955/https://chanarchive.org/4chan/vp/8295/pokemon-fans-3m-get]()
4. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/girls-laughing]()
---
Source: https://meme.com/memes/girls-laughing
Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library