Staring Hamster

2019reaction imageclassic

Published September 29, 2026

Staring Hamster is a reaction image and short video of a hamster locking eyes with the camera, first popularized in a January 2019 TikTok lipsync by @beanboy22. The looping stare spread across iFunny, Twitter and Instagram within a week and later became the mascot of TikTok's 2021 Hamster Cult, a joke faction formed to troll Lana Del Rey fans.

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Overview

Staring Hamster is a short clip and image macro of a small hamster looking dead-eyed straight into the camera. The stare reads as blank, mildly judgmental, or unsettling depending on the caption, which is why it slotted so easily into a reaction-image slot next to formats like Staring Kanye1. The looped, silent version stripped of its original lipsync audio is the one most people recognize2.

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The format is usually deployed as a wordless response or as a captioned macro implying the hamster has just witnessed something baffling. It also picked up a second life in 2021 as the mascot of TikTok's Hamster Cult, where users swapped their avatars to the hamster's face as a group identity3. That later chapter turned a single reaction image into a full running joke community, complete with in-jokes about hoarding hamsters and declaring war on rival fandoms4.

Origin & Background

Platform
TikTok (origin) / Twitter and iFunny (viral spread)
Creator
@beanboy22
Date
2019

The earliest known appearance of the hamster is a TikTok posted on January 13th, 2019 by user @beanboy22, who lipsyncs a line from the web series The Real Bros of Simi Valley over footage of the animal staring into the lens5. The scene being mouthed originates from a Facebook clip of the show6. Within about a week the original TikTok pulled in over 124,000 reactions and 13,000 shares2.

The hamster itself is the subject rather than the creator of the format, and the earliest known meme use is credited to @beanboy22's post rather than to any confirmed edit artist behind the isolated stare loop2.

How It Spread

On January 16th, 2019, Instagram user benisblaster re-edited the TikTok into a silent loop of just the hamster's stare, which pulled more than 15,000 views and 4,183 likes in its first week2. Two days later on iFunny, users Avuelix and Jepsi built Facetime crossover edits pairing the hamster with Staring Kanye, each racking up thousands of smiles over the following year78.

The format broke out on Twitter on January 19th, 2019, when @Slazo shared Avuelix's version. That tweet cleared 32,000 retweets and 87,000 likes within three days, moving the hamster from TikTok and iFunny niches into general reaction-image rotation1.

In February 2021, Staring Hamster returned as the face of TikTok's Hamster Cult, a parody faction created to mock the then-viral Lana Del Ray cult. On February 20th, 2021, @Camellia_Alexan tweeted screenshots of Hamster Cult members swarming Lana fans in TikTok comments3. The same day, user @walterhastalent posted about waking up to 286 hamster-avatar followers and framed the trend as a TikTok war against Lana Del Rey4.

How to Use This Meme

Common convention is to drop the silent looping clip or a still frame as a reply when someone posts something odd, uncomfortable, or hard to react to in words. People typically pair it with a short caption like a question the hamster is silently asking, or use it as a profile picture to signal Hamster Cult affiliation3.

Frequently Asked Questions