What is Monkey Haircut?

Monkey Haircut is a 2017 viral video of a young macaque calmly getting its hair trimmed at a salon, later turned into a photoshop template placing the monkey into other images.

Where did Monkey Haircut come from?

The clip was first uploaded on February 15, 2017 by the JFOX Facebook page and gained more than 3.8 million views within seven months.

What does Monkey Haircut mean?

It refers both to the original salon video and to the photoshop format where the seated, eyes-closed monkey is inserted into unrelated scenes so someone else appears to be cutting its hair.

How do you use Monkey Haircut?

Editors paste the cropped screencap of the seated macaque into a base image so a person or character holding scissors or a tool looks like they are giving the monkey a trim, as seen in edits featuring Donald Trump and Pills That Make You Stare.

Is Monkey Haircut still popular?

The format peaked in September 2017 with a wave of Facebook and Reddit edits and a dedicated Twitter account, and now sits as a classic 2017 photoshop meme rather than a currently trending one.

Monkey Haircut

2017viral videoclassic

Published September 6, 2026

Monkey Haircut is a viral 2017 video of a young macaque calmly closing its eyes while getting its hair trimmed at a salon. The clip, first posted to a Thai Facebook page in February 2017, quickly jumped to Reddit and spawned a photoshop template placing celebrities, cartoon characters and politicians in the barber's role.

primate memes exploitable templates photoshop memes animal memes 2017 memes

Overview

Monkey Haircut refers to a short clip of a baby macaque sitting perfectly still with its eyes gently shut while a stylist snips at its fur, as though the animal is enjoying a spa day like any human customer1. The stillness of the monkey, paired with the very human context of a salon chair, gave the footage a calm, almost meditative quality that made it easy to screenshot and reuse.

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Online, the still frame from the video became a photoshop template. Editors drop the seated monkey into unrelated images so that whoever is holding scissors, a pen or any hand tool in the base picture appears to be cutting its hair2. Common variations run from Donald Trump signing an executive order to Pills That Make You Stare edits, giving the format a wide comedic range while keeping the monkey's serene face as the constant punchline3.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Facebook (source video) / Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

JFOX

Date

2017

The source clip was uploaded on February 15, 2017 by the Thai Facebook page JFOX, which posted the roughly minute-long video of a young macaque receiving a trim at a salon1. Over the following seven months the upload racked up more than 3.8 million views, 55,700 shares and 35,000 reactions on Facebook1.

Two days later, on February 17, 2017, Redditor KevlarYarmulke reposted the footage as a GIF to r/gif, where it collected around 1,400 points at 89% upvoted and about 50 comments over the next several months2.

How It Spread

The photoshop wave arrived months after the original clip. On August 31, 2017, the Brazilian Facebook page "Macacos rindo de noticias chocantes" ("Monkeys laughing at shocking news," translated from Portuguese) paired a news story about a monkey electrocuted by power lines with the haircut screencap, pulling in over 500 shares and 470 reactions in the following month1.

The template really picked up on September 24, 2017. That day, the Content Zone Facebook page shared an edit of Donald Trump signing an executive order reworked so the president appears to be cutting the monkey's hair, while the Meme Supreme page rolled out a Pills That Make You Stare variation built around the same screencap1. The same day, Redditor Shaponja asked r/MemeEconomy whether the format was "on the rise," and a dedicated @MonkeyHaircut Twitter account launched to catalogue new examples3.

How to Use This Meme

The typical Monkey Haircut edit starts with a base image of someone holding scissors, a pen, a document or any small handheld object. Editors then paste the cropped screencap of the seated, eyes-closed macaque into the frame so the object lines up with the monkey's head, making it read as though the person is grooming the animal. Captions are usually minimal, since the joke lives in the visual mismatch between the serious base scene and the placid monkey getting pampered3.