What is Stick Figure Violence?

It's an image macro of six gruesome stick figure drawings arranged around a short caption, used to dramatize an exaggerated emotional reaction to whatever the caption describes.

Where did Stick Figure Violence come from?

Instagram user @hollowcloth compiled six existing Tumblr drawings into one image on November 1, 2021, with the caption "girls when they're in love".

What does Stick Figure Violence mean?

The bloody panels stage extreme internal reactions, letting the poster frame a small feeling as cartoonish over the top violence.

How do you use Stick Figure Violence?

Add a short caption in the middle, usually starting with "me when" or "[group] when they're," describing a scenario that gets a wildly disproportionate reaction.

Is Stick Figure Violence still popular?

It peaked as a viral format in November 2021 and is now known mostly as a classic reaction template rather than a currently trending meme.

Stick Figure Violence

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Published August 14, 2026

Stick Figure Violence, also known as Bloody Rage Moodboard, is an image macro built from six gory stick figure cartoons arranged around a short caption. Instagram user @hollowcloth compiled the template in November 2021, and it went viral on Twitter and Tumblr as a reaction format for exaggerated emotional overreactions.

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Overview

Stick Figure Violence, also known as Bloody Rage Moodboard, is an image macro built from six stick figure cartoons drawn mid-brawl, showing scenes of murder and cannibalism1. A short caption sits in the middle of the collage, and the panicked figures around it stand in for how a person or group reacts to whatever the text names1.

The rough, hand-drawn look sits close to older brutalist stick figure templates like Check Out How Hard I Can Pee from 20183. Each of the six panels was originally posted by different Tumblr artists before anyone stitched them together, which is why the collage feels mismatched by design.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Tumblr (source drawings) / Instagram (viral compilation)

Creator

@hollowcloth

Date

2021

The six drawings lived on Tumblr well before anyone thought to combine them. The bottom left panel was already circulating on Tumblr in May 20213, and another cartoon posted on October 3, 2021 by the Tumblr blog death2america pulled roughly 1,300 notes over two months7.

Instagram account @hollowcloth stitched the six cartoons into a single image macro on November 1, 2021, with the caption "girls when they're in love"1. That post picked up around 5,700 likes over its first month and set the base template every later remix worked from.

How It Spread

The Bloody Rage Moodboard jumped platforms fast. Tumblr blog caenus reposted @hollowcloth's original on November 4, 2021, where it collected around 19,200 notes in about a month5. Six days later, Twitter user @iztea_ posted the first known remix, swapping the caption to "artists when they have a drawing idea," and the tweet pulled roughly 101,400 likes in three weeks2.

Also on November 10, 2021, Instagram user @thisisafleshprison rewrote every line to read "me when it's time to set a healthy and reasonable boundary," picking up about 12,900 likes4. That version kicked off a run of "me when" captions that partially displaced @hollowcloth's original "girls when they're" phrasing.

On November 11, 2021, Tumblr user bluegreysong kept only the word "girls" and slotted in a Taylor Swift reference for the first Tumblr-native variant, which drew 203 notes in a month6. Through the rest of November 2021, the format spread further to Reddit and iFunny, with captions covering picking a movie to watch and reactions to the TV show Succession3.

How to Use This Meme

Captions typically start with "me when" or "[group] when they're," followed by a mundane situation that does not obviously call for a violent response4. The joke lives in the gap between the low-stakes text and the stick figure carnage around it, so the caption is often short and focused on a single emotional overreaction.