Warped Selena Gomez crying face with 'SHIT' text overlay

Selena Gomez Crying

2013reaction imageclassic

Published September 26, 2026

Selena Gomez Crying is a reaction image based on a still from a December 2013 radio interview where the singer teared up watching a fan contest submission. Twitter fan accounts turned the tearful frame into a photoshop template for every minor inconvenience, spawning one of the defining fan-account reaction memes of early 2014.

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Overview

Selena Gomez Crying is a reaction image and photoshop template built around a single frame of the singer's eyes welling up during a radio interview1. In the still, Gomez's lower lip trembles and her eyes glass over, giving the face a wounded, over-it-all quality that fan accounts weaponized for every trivial disappointment3.

The format has two main modes. The plain reaction usage pairs the still with a caption in the pattern of "when [tiny disappointment happens]", such as opening Christmas presents that turn out not to be concert tickets2. The photoshop mode drops Gomez's teary face into unrelated scenes, from movie stills to album covers, treating her expression as a floating sticker of pure sadness3. A GIF version by chuckmccarthy and a Lana Del Rey album parody by @MattPolimeno were among the earliest circulated edits1.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (source clip) / Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Unknown
Date
2013

On December 9th, 2013, LA radio show The Hot Hits uploaded an interview clip to YouTube in which Gomez was shown the winning submission from its "biggest Selena Gomez fan" contest4. Gomez visibly chokes up watching the video, and it's this near-cry face that became the template. The clip passed 1 million views by March 20141.

The reaction-image use began on January 1st, 2014, when a newly created Twitter account @SELENASADMEZ posted a still of Gomez's watering eyes with the caption "when you open your christmas presents and its not concert tickets"2. That single tweet established both the visual (the interview screengrab) and the caption pattern ("when [minor sadness]") that later edits copied1.

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How It Spread

The format took off the same day it was posted. Also on January 1st, 2014, a second Twitter account, @CryingGomez, tweeted a photoshopped version of the still captioned "when you write a good tweet and it's more than 140 characters," and spent the rest of January posting Gomez's teary face pasted into unrelated images1. By March 2014, @CryingGomez had gathered around 24,000 followers while @SELENASADMEZ sat around 4,7001.

Mainstream write-ups arrived in mid-March. On March 12th, 2014, BuzzFeed published a roundup titled "The Selena Gomez Crying Meme Is Literally Applicable To Everything That Could Ever Happen," collecting the best fan uses of the still as a reaction face in tweets and text-message screenshots1. IB Times followed with its own writeup a day later1.

Beyond the two anchor accounts, notable early derivatives included a looping GIF version by chuckmccarthy and a Lana Del Rey album-cover parody by @MattPolimeno, both circulated alongside the @CryingGomez photoshops1. The meme is distinct from the later Selena Gomez Crying About Deportations viral video from January 2025, which uses a different clip entirely1.

Timeline

2013-12-09

The Hot Hits uploads the fan-contest interview clip to YouTube; Gomez tears up watching the winning submission.

2014-01-01

@SELENASADMEZ posts the first known reaction-image use of the still, captioned about Christmas presents not being concert tickets.

2014-01-01

@CryingGomez sends its first tweet, a photoshopped Gomez captioned about tweets going over 140 characters.

2014-01

@CryingGomez posts photoshopped edits throughout the month, dropping Gomez's teary face into unrelated images.

2014-03-12

BuzzFeed publishes its Selena Gomez Crying roundup, giving the meme its first major press writeup.

2014-03-13

IB Times publishes a follow-up article on the photoshop meme.

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