What is Nothing To Do Here?

It's a rage comic catchphrase paired with Jet Pack Guy, a stick figure who ends awkward situations by flying away with a jet pack.

Where did Nothing To Do Here come from?

It was created by user premutos on the Spanish rage comic site Cuanto Cabrón on April 21, 2011.

What does Nothing To Do Here mean?

It's a bail-out line, used when someone wants to abandon a conversation or an embarrassing moment, mirroring how the character jet-packs out of the panel.

How do you use Nothing To Do Here?

You typically set up an awkward or losing scenario, drop the catchphrase in the penultimate panel, and finish with the jet pack silhouette shooting off-frame.

Is Nothing To Do Here still popular?

It's a classic rage comic reaction from the 2011 era; it circulated heavily through 2012 across 9gag, Reddit, deviantArt, and Tumblr and is still recognized as one of the standard escape-reaction formats from that period.

Nothing To Do Here

2011catchphraseclassic

Published September 10, 2026

Nothing To Do Here / Jet Pack Guy is a rage comic catchphrase built around a stick figure who escapes any awkward moment by rocketing away with a jet pack. Born on a Spanish rage comic site in April 20111, it became one of the defining escape-hatch reaction formats of the early 2010s rage comic boom3.

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Overview

The format is simple and modular: a stick figure walks into a socially painful moment, deadpans the line 'nothing to do here,' and then a jet pack fires out of his back as he blasts off-panel4. The final frame almost always shows a diagonal trail of exhaust and the character's legs disappearing upward, which became the visual signature that made the joke read even without the caption.

Because the escape gag works on top of nearly any setup, the character was quickly used as a punchline stamp on other rage comics rather than as the star of his own strips1. Awkward flirting, embarrassing family moments, and school failures all got the same treatment, and the catchphrase was often used on its own as a reply, in the same slot people used the earlier 'Spontaneous Snail' abandon-thread reaction4.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Cuanto Cabrón (source) / 9gag / Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

premutos

Date

2011

The character was drawn by user premutos on the Spanish rage comic community Cuanto Cabrón on April 21, 20111. In the original strip, a man chats up a woman who then mentions she has a boyfriend, and he responds by declaring there is nothing to do here and jet-packing away4.

The strip was made in Spanish (translated from Spanish for English audiences), and the 'nothing to do here' punchline was carried directly into the English rewrite that started circulating a few weeks later2.

How It Spread

An English-translated version of premutos' comic hit 9gag in May 2011, which is where most non-Spanish-speaking readers first saw Jet Pack Guy2. From there the character jumped to Reddit, where user romanpppp posted the first known Jet Pack Guy comic on October 1, 2011 and the thread reached the front page of r/f7u12, the main rage comic subreddit at the time3.

Once it had r/f7u12 traction, the format snowballed across the rage comic ecosystem. Cuanto Cabrón itself hosted close to 50 comics tagged 'nothing to do here' in the year after launch, and derivative pages piled up on deviantArt, Tumblr, and FunnyJunk4. A dedicated MemeGenerator page for Jet Pack Guy passed 250 submissions by March 20125, and the Facebook fan page for the character crossed 120,000 likes in the same window6.

The jet pack exit stuck around as a shorthand well after the rage comic wave itself faded, sitting alongside 'Spontaneous Snail' as one of the go-to abandon-thread gestures inherited from that era4.

Timeline

2011-04-21

Premutos posts the original 'Ligue fallido' strip on Cuanto Cabrón, introducing the Jet Pack Guy escape gag.

2011-05

English-translated version of the comic appears on 9gag.

2011-10-01

Romanpppp posts the first known Jet Pack Guy rage comic on Reddit's r/f7u12, and the thread hits the subreddit's front page.

2012-03

MemeGenerator page for Jet Pack Guy passes 250 user submissions; the Facebook fan page crosses 120,000 likes.

How to Use This Meme

The typical usage is either as a comic template or as a standalone reply. In comic form, creators set up any embarrassing or losing situation in the first panels, drop the line 'Nothing to do here' in the second-to-last panel, and end with the jet pack silhouette shooting off the top of the frame5. As a reply, people often paste just the final jet pack panel or type the catchphrase to signal they're bailing on a conversation.