Slowpoke

2006reaction imageclassic

Published September 27, 2026

Slowpoke is a Pokemon-based reaction image that 4chan users started posting in late 2006 to mock anyone bringing up old news. The pink Water/Psychic type became shorthand for 'you're late to the party,' typically paired with the caption 'Hey guys, did you hear...' before some ancient headline. From /b/ trolling it grew into a top-30 Memegenerator template by 2012.

pokemonreaction memes4chan memesadvice animalslate 2000s memes

Overview

The format is dead simple: a plain image of Slowpoke staring dopily into space, captioned 'Hey guys, did you hear...' followed by news everyone already discussed weeks or months ago4. The joke lands because the Pokemon itself is canonically slow-witted and easily distracted, a Water/Psychic type that first appeared in the original Red and Blue games6. Posters used it to troll anyone treating stale information as fresh, and the pattern was strict enough that /b/ regulars recognized a Slowpoke reply as a specific put-down rather than random spam5.

By 2007, /b/ users started chaining Slowpokes into 'combo' threads where three posters had to hit reply back-to-back with the same image3. The advice animal remix in May 2011 swapped the plain white background for the standard two-tone pink starburst, opening the format to Reddit-friendly captions and mass generation4. That version is what most people picture today when they hear the meme's name.

Origin & Background

Platform
4chan /b/
Date
2006

The earliest archived Slowpoke troll landed on 4chan's /b/ board on December 26, 2006, captioned 'Christmas hat!' the day after the holiday, when nobody cared anymore1. The image was a straight rip of Slowpoke's official artwork from the original Red and Blue Pokemon games6. Over the following months /b/ posters kept reusing it to mock outdated news items.

On May 1, 2007, a Slowpoke image landed as 4chan's 26,000,001st post, logged as the official 26 million GET5. A few days later on May 4, one /b/ thread stretched the gag across roughly 40 images before Slowpoke fully wandered into frame2.

How It Spread

On April 22, 2007, one poster tried a Slowpoke combo, three consecutive Slowpokes in a row, and got banned by moot for posting too quickly, an incident chanarchive preserved as a canonical thread3. VG Cats' spinoff webcomic Super Effective started using the 'breaking old news' gag in a 2009 strip7, and Reddit gaming threads picked the format up by 2010.

The advice animal version was first submitted to r/AdviceAnimals on May 22, 2011, with the exact caption 'Hey guys, did you hear...'4. By February 2012, Memegenerator hosted more than 40,000 Slowpoke templates, ranked #26 all-time on the site8. Humor sites Smosh, Ranker and the Bigster all ran 'best of Slowpoke' roundups between May and July of that year5.

A drawn fan spinoff, the Ask Slowpoke Tumblr, opened in August 2011 and answered community questions in character9. The character also kept a steady presence in Pokemon fanart circles, with thousands of Slowpoke pieces indexed on deviantArt5.

How to Use This Meme

The convention is to reply to a stale post or thread with a plain Slowpoke image and the words 'Hey guys, did you hear...' followed by whatever ancient event you're pretending to just learn about. Common variations include the advice animal version with the pink starburst background for Reddit-style captions, and the 4chan 'combo,' where three posters attempt to reply with Slowpoke back-to-back in the same thread3.

Frequently Asked Questions