What is Is That Hyperpigmentation?

It's a viral meme centered on a black-and-white pen drawing of a woman's face with a large black dot on the cheek, tied to a mom's line "Is that hyperpigmentation?" from a 2019 home video[1].

Where did Is That Hyperpigmentation come from?

Sonia Tiebi filmed her daughter Sierra showing off the portrait on May 4th, 2019, and ViralHog uploaded a licensed version to YouTube that June[1].

What does Is That Hyperpigmentation mean?

The line is the mom's honest reaction to a dark dot her daughter drew on her cheek, and the phrase became the caption glued to reposts of the drawing[2].

How do you use Is That Hyperpigmentation?

People crop the drawing out of the video and paste it into templates about presenting bad art, or use it in lookalike comparisons where another image resembles the portrait's cheek dot[5].

Is Is That Hyperpigmentation still popular?

The meme peaked in 2024 when @baezycoolmane's repost hit 94.5 million plays and spread into Halloween costumes and comparison edits through late October[4].

Is That Hyperpigmentation

2019viral videodeclining

Published August 12, 2026

Is That Hyperpigmentation is a 2019 home video and its accompanying pen portrait, in which a young girl draws her mom with a giant black dot on the cheek that the mother identifies as hyperpigmentation. The clip and the isolated drawing went viral on TikTok through 2024 as a running joke about bad art and lookalike comparisons.

child virality memes exploitable templates delayed virality memes doppelganger memes

Overview

Is That Hyperpigmentation refers to a rough black-and-white pen portrait a young girl drew of her mom, defined by a big solid black dot on the cheek that the mother points at while asking "Is that hyperpigmentation?" in a home video1. Both parents are cracking up in the clip as the daughter presents her work2.

The drawing itself was later isolated from the footage and became a standalone exploitable, dropped into reaction formats and remixed as fan art5. Two forms of the meme circulate together: reposts of the original clip with fresh captions, and edits that plug the cropped portrait into unrelated templates.

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter / YouTube (source), TikTok (viral spread)

Creator

Sonia Tiebi

Date

2019

Sonia Tiebi filmed her daughter Sierra unveiling the portrait on May 4th, 2019, which is when the "Is that hyperpigmentation?" line was caught on camera1. ViralHog licensed the footage and put it on YouTube on June 10th, 2019, where it pulled over 1.5 million views in the years after1. Sonia herself shared the video from her personal Twitter account @sonia_tiebi on July 17th, 2019, picking up around 3,000 likes2.

How It Spread

The clip sat quietly for a few years before TikTok surfaced it. A reupload by @pgardon on April 28th, 2023 hit over 41.5 million plays and 9.2 million likes3. Later that year on November 28th, TikToker @ijustllne set the video against the caption "Me showing my art teacher my art project I've spent multiple weeks making," clearing 10.7 million plays5.

Momentum jumped in 2024. TikToker @baezycoolmane reposted the original on May 8th under the caption "Girl Cries After Her Dad Laughs At Her Drawing," pulling 94.5 million plays and 15.4 million likes in five months4. From there the drawing broke off from the video into a standalone image. On July 15th, @kai_drawsthings used the portrait in a "How I wanna draw" vs. "How I actually draw" bit that crossed 500,000 plays4.

By October 2024, the drawing was fitted into wider meme formats. TikToker @toowoomba_ posted a "Why Is X Lowkey Serving Y" edit on October 10th comparing Hurricane Milton's satellite face to the pigmentation portrait, hitting 6.9 million plays5. X user @lovenotesagquote attached the drawing to a tweet complaining about how people don't understand a posted image on October 24th, and TikToker @user46877610 dressed as the drawing for Halloween four days later, pulling 3.5 million plays in two days4.

How to Use This Meme

The most common template pairs the cropped pigmentation drawing with a caption about proudly presenting bad work, often to a teacher, parent, or boss. The portrait is also slotted into "Lowkey Serving" side-by-side comparisons and costume posts, where the visual gag is that some unrelated face happens to look exactly like the drawing's blocky features and black cheek dot.

Frequently Asked Questions

References (5)