What is Pondering My Orb?

Pondering My Orb is an image macro using a 1988 Angus McBride fantasy painting of a sage with a crystal ball, captioned 'pondering my orb' and treated as an exploitable template.

What does Pondering My Orb mean?

The joke plays on the mismatch between the solemn fantasy-art style and whatever absurd or trivial thing the orb or caption stands in for in each edit, as in the AngriestPat version.

How do you use Pondering My Orb?

Edits typically paste another character's face over the sage, replace the orb with another round item, or insert the figure into templates like Boy and Girl Texting.

Is Pondering My Orb still popular?

Pondering My Orb had its biggest moments in October and November 2021 across Twitter, Reddit and Imgur, when edits like the Boy and Girl Texting version collected tens of thousands of views.

Pondering My Orb

Q: Where did Pondering My Orb come from?

Twitter user @thatsgoodweb posted the McBride artwork with the caption 'pondering my orb' on October 15, 2021, and the tweet collected thousands of retweets within days.

2021image macroclassic

Published October 27, 2026

Pondering My Orb, also called Ponder Orb, started as an October 2021 Twitter post combining a vintage fantasy illustration of a robed sage gazing into a crystal ball with the deadpan caption 'pondering my orb.' The painting itself was Angus McBride artwork from a 1988 Lord of the Rings gamebook, and once @thatsgoodweb posted it, Twitter and Reddit users began pasting different characters' faces onto the sage or substituting the orb for other objects. By November 2021, edits using the Boy and Girl Texting template were giving the image a second viral run on Imgur.

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Overview

A typical Pondering My Orb edit either substitutes the sage's face for another character or replaces the orb with a different round object, keeping the caption 'pondering my orb' or riffing on its stilted first-person phrasing1. The appeal sits in the contrast between the earnest high-fantasy painting style of Angus McBride and whatever mundane or absurd subject the editor attaches to it. Posts often follow a 'pondering my [X]' structure where X is deliberately deflating, filling in with items like a Game Boy or a bowl of soup.

Some edits keep the original figure intact and only alter the object in the sage's hands, while others place the painting into existing templates like Boy and Girl Texting4. Online communities centered on wrestling and video games produced some of the earliest standout iterations, including an October 2021 AngriestPat edit on r/TwoBestFriendsPlay5.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter (origin) / Reddit and Imgur (viral spread)

Creator

@thatsgoodweb

Date

2021

The source image is a 1988 cover painting by English historical and fantasy illustrator Angus McBride, commissioned for Middle-Earth Quest: A Spy In Isengard, a solo gamebook set around Saruman's tower in Tolkien's legendarium2. Iron Crown Enterprises reused the same artwork five years later on the 1993 Valar & Maiar supplement for its Middle-earth Role Playing system3.

Twitter user @thatsgoodweb tweeted the painting with the caption 'pondering my orb' on October 15, 2021, and the post gathered over 3,300 retweets and 21,000 likes1.

How It Spread

Within days of @thatsgoodweb's tweet, Reddit users were already remixing the picture. Redditor wahirsch edited the figure into AngriestPat and shared the result on r/TwoBestFriendsPlay on October 21, 2021, where it earned more than 130 upvotes5. On November 2, Imgur user kickmyballsrealhard combined Pondering My Orb with the Boy and Girl Texting template, and the gallery collected over 75,000 views in its first day4.

Edits circulated across Twitter, Reddit and Imgur through late October before Pondering My Orb saw a second burst of attention in late November 2021, when the image appeared again across social media more heavily than during its initial run3.

Timeline

1988

Angus McBride's cover painting is published on Middle-Earth Quest: A Spy In Isengard, a Lord of the Rings role-playing gamebook.

1993

Iron Crown Enterprises reuses the same McBride artwork on the Valar & Maiar supplement for Middle-earth Role Playing.

2021-10-15

Twitter user @thatsgoodweb posts the painting with the caption 'pondering my orb,' earning 3,300+ retweets and 21,000+ likes.

2021-10-21

Redditor wahirsch posts an AngriestPat edit on r/TwoBestFriendsPlay, where it earns more than 130 points.

2021-11-02

Imgur user kickmyballsrealhard posts an edit combining the orb painting with the Boy and Girl Texting template, hitting 75,000+ views in a day.

2021-11

Pondering My Orb sees a second burst of attention across social media, appearing more heavily than during October.

How to Use This Meme

To make a Pondering My Orb edit, users typically take the McBride painting and either paste a different face over the sage or substitute the crystal ball for another round object, keeping the caption 'pondering my orb' or filling in a different noun. Common variants place the figure into other meme templates like Boy and Girl Texting4.