Kim Kardashian's Like Butter Tweet

2018photoshop memeclassic

Published September 4, 2026

On August 6th, 2018, Kim Kardashian West posted a photo of herself lying stiffly on a bed in underwear and Yeezy Butter 350 sneakers, captioned "Like butter." The awkward pose immediately spawned a wave of Photoshop jokes comparing her to a Toy Story toy playing dead, one of the defining celebrity-photo memes of that summer.

Overview

Kim Kardashian's Like Butter Tweet is the nickname for an August 2018 promotional photo Kardashian posted to sell the Yeezy Butter 350 sneakers designed by Kanye West1. In the shot she is lying flat on her back on a bed in beige underwear and the tan sneakers, arms pinned at her sides and face blank, which is the detail that set the internet off rather than the shoes themselves2.

The meme itself is the flood of Photoshop edits and comparison jokes that followed. Most riffs treat the stiff, limbs-straight pose as if Kardashian were a doll, a chalk outline, or a runner frozen mid-stride, then drop her cutout into an unrelated scene3. The most-shared angle compared her to the toys in Toy Story going limp the second a human walks in34.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter / Instagram (viral spread)
Key People
Kim Kardashian West; @Troyavision, @ADAMATION, @AngelTFC
Date
2018

On August 6th, 2018, Kim Kardashian West tweeted the photo with the caption "Like butter. #Butter350's #Yeezy" to promote the Yeezy Butter 350 sneaker1. Within 24 hours the tweet pulled more than 4,100 retweets and 49,000 likes, while the same image on her Instagram cleared 2.8 million likes and 30,000 comments19.

The backlash and joke wave started the same day. Fans were less interested in the shoes than in the pose, which Mashable described as "uncomfortable-looking" and paired with a blank facial expression2. That contrast between a polished promo shot and a body that looked propped up like a mannequin is what turned the tweet into meme fuel almost immediately.

How It Spread

The first wave of edits hit Twitter on August 6th. User @ADAMATION dropped Kardashian's cutout body into a photo from the San Francisco Marathon, landing more than 300 retweets and 1,600 likes in the first day2. Later that day @Troyavision posted the joke that outran the rest, captioning the image "toys when Andy walked in the room" as a Toy Story reference, which pulled over 27,000 retweets and 91,000 likes in 24 hours3. @AngelTFC ran with the same angle and Photoshopped her into an actual Toy Story toy box, hitting 9,100 retweets and 21,000 likes4.

Mashable rounded up the reaction on August 7th, cataloguing comparisons to a Life Support commercial still, the Mad Men opening credits, a chalk outline, a Twister board and more2. Twitter itself published a Moments page collecting the best jokes the same day5, and Business Insider and Highsnobiety filed their own writeups covering the pose and the Yeezy Butter 350 launch behind it78.

A second storyline ran alongside the memes: several outlets pointed out the tweet went up only a few hours after Beyoncé's Vogue September issue photos dropped, feeding an ongoing spotlight-stealing narrative around the two2. That timing gave the joke tweets an extra edge and kept the story in entertainment coverage for the rest of the week.

How to Use This Meme

The template is simple: take the original overhead shot of Kardashian lying rigid on the bed, cut her out, and drop the cutout into a scene where a stiff, doll-like body looks absurd. Common conventions include placing her among Toy Story toys, on a race course, inside a chalk-outline crime scene, or into any group photo where everyone else is upright. The caption typically leans on the gag that she looks like a toy pretending not to be alive, echoing @Troyavision's original "toys when Andy walked in the room" line3.

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