I Have Hired X to Stare at You — Grainy black-and-white photo of a dark bird with caption 'i have hired this bird to stare at you'

I Have Hired X to Stare at You

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Published October 16, 2026

On March 12, 2021, iFunny user @0bwgfmudbl4186 posted a GIF of a crow with the caption "I have hired this bird to stare at you," launching a template that meme-makers filled with foxes, cats, and other staring animals. The format reached Instagram within weeks, where @grandmas.butt reposts collected tens of thousands of likes, and by October 2022 posters were replacing text in the caption with images.

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Overview

The joke works through deadpan absurdity: the caption presents an animal that happens to be looking at the camera as a paid employee whose only job is to stare at whoever is scrolling past. Early entries in the I Have Hired X to Stare at You format stuck to one sentence paired with a GIF or still of birds, foxes, and cats making uncomfortable direct eye contact13. Posters hunted for footage where the stare quality itself did most of the work.

By 2022, iterations started piling other memes on top of the base gag. @jank.v1's February 17, 2022 Instagram video layered the caption with Kanye's Blank Stare and nodded to his Holding Notepad photo along with I'm In Your Walls7. Later that year the written caption began losing words to images: @cat.shitpost's October 11, 2022 edit put a cat's face on a baby seal so that "cat" was a picture rather than text8. By mid-2023, @birdworldcentral had turned "you" into a tennis ball at which a bird appeared to be staring9.

Origin & Background

Platform
iFunny (origin) / Instagram (viral spread)
Date
2021

On March 12, 2021, iFunny user @0bwgfmudbl4186 posted a GIF of a staring crow captioned "I have hired this bird to stare at you." The post picked up more than 65 smiles over the next two years and is the earliest known version of I Have Hired X to Stare at You1. On the same day, Twitter account @poge46061768 posted an identical GIF; that account was later deleted after the tweet drew only two likes, though a Wayback Machine capture survives2. Know Your Meme lists the iFunny entry as the first documented posting5.

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How It Spread

Three weeks after the crow post, on April 5, 2021, iFunny user @Magoth repeated the format with a fox and the line "I have hired this fox to stare at you," collecting more than 30 smiles over two years3. The next day, April 6, Instagram's @grandmas.butt ran the fox version and gathered roughly 23,400 likes over two years4. The same account came back on August 10, 2021 with "I have hired this cat to stare at you," which climbed to about 42,900 likes6.

By early 2022 the gag was getting denser. @jank.v1's February 17, 2022 Instagram video combined the caption with Kanye's Blank Stare and references to his Holding Notepad photo and the I'm In Your Walls meme, drawing about 28,100 likes within a year7. Know Your Meme notes that late 2022 and early 2023 iterations began substituting pictures for words in the caption5.

@cat.shitpost's October 11, 2022 Instagram post showed a baby seal with a cat's face edited onto it, collecting roughly 7,300 likes over eight months8. On May 15, 2023, @birdworldcentral posted a version with a bird appearing to stare at a tennis ball, which gathered around 47,900 likes in its first 17 days9.

Timeline

2021-03-12

IFunny user @0bwgfmudbl4186 posts "I have hired this bird to stare at you" with a staring crow GIF, the earliest known version.

2021-03-12

Twitter user @poge46061768 posts an identical GIF the same day; the account is later deleted.

2021-04-05

IFunny user @Magoth adapts the format with a fox: "I have hired this fox to stare at you."

2021-04-06

Instagram's @grandmas.butt reposts the fox version and gathers roughly 23,400 likes over two years.

2021-08-10

@grandmas.butt posts a cat version that climbs to about 42,900 likes.

2022-02-17

@jank.v1 posts a video combining the caption with Kanye's Blank Stare, Holding Notepad, and I'm In Your Walls.

2022-10-11

@cat.shitpost replaces the word "cat" with an image, posting a baby seal with a cat's face.

2023-05-15

@birdworldcentral turns "you" into a tennis ball at which a bird appears to stare.

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