# I Have Hired X to Stare at You 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. ## Origin 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 You[1]. 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 survives[2]. Know Your Meme lists the iFunny entry as the first documented posting[5]. - **Platform:** iFunny (origin) / Instagram (viral spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2021 ## 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 contact[1][3]. 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 Walls[7]. 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 text[8]. By mid-2023, @birdworldcentral had turned "you" into a tennis ball at which a bird appeared to be staring[9]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is I Have Hired X to Stare at You? It is a GIF caption format where a staring animal is framed as a paid employee hired to stare at the viewer, with the caption reading some form of "I have hired this [animal] to stare at you"[1]. ### Where did I Have Hired X to Stare at You come from? iFunny user @0bwgfmudbl4186 posted the first known version on March 12, 2021 with a staring crow GIF[1]. Twitter user @poge46061768 posted an identical GIF the same day before deleting the account[2]. ### What does I Have Hired X to Stare at You mean? The joke treats an animal caught looking at the camera as a contracted staring agent, playing the setup entirely straight for deadpan humor[5]. ### How do you use I Have Hired X to Stare at You? Posters typically pair a GIF or photo of an animal making direct eye contact with the caption "I have hired this [animal] to stare at you," and later versions often replace words in the caption with pictures, as in @cat.shitpost's seal-with-a-cat-face edit[8]. ### Is I Have Hired X to Stare at You still popular? The format saw its biggest Instagram hits during 2021 through 2023, including @birdworldcentral's May 2023 tennis ball post, which gathered about 47,900 likes in 17 days[9]. ## References 1. [https://ifunny.co/gif/i-have-hired-thi-to-stare-at-you-rd-9GrnusXR8]() 2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210312204705/https://twitter.com/poge46061768/status/1370476391813234692]() 3. [https://ifunny.co/gif/have-hired-this-fox-to-stare-at-you-IzF800WV8]() 4. [https://www.instagram.com/p/CNWTjXunR7g/]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-have-hired-x-to-stare-at-you]() 6. [https://www.instagram.com/p/CSZgxApMLm9/]() 7. [https://www.instagram.com/tv/CaE-tzlMQ9_/]() 8. [https://www.instagram.com/p/Cjl6NSJJlew/]() 9. [https://www.instagram.com/p/CsQ5KB-S3vB/]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/i-have-hired-x-to-stare-at-you Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library