What is That Damn Smile?

That Damn Smile is a four-panel exploitable built on a scene from 13 Reasons Why where the third-panel crush shot of Justin Foley gets swapped for an absurd character, undercutting Hannah Baker's sincere narration.

Where did That Damn Smile come from?

Instagram user @joblessmarwadi posted the earliest known edit on May 25, 2017, drawing from a pilot-episode scene in Netflix's teen drama 13 Reasons Why.

What does That Damn Smile mean?

The format flips Hannah Baker's earnest romantic confession about Justin's smile into a punchline by dropping any other face into the middle panel.

How do you use That Damn Smile?

Grab the template Redditor NegativeKarmaSniifer posted to r/13ReasonsWhy on May 28, 2017, keep the three Hannah Baker panels intact, and swap the Justin Foley shot for the face you want to joke about.

Is That Damn Smile still popular?

No, it peaked in mid-2017 and the r/MemeEconomy crowd was already calling it a bad buy by July 5 that year.

That Damn Smile

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Published September 30, 2026

That Damn Smile is a four-panel image macro that surfaced in May 2017, remixing a heartfelt scene from Netflix's teen drama 13 Reasons Why by swapping the narrator's crush for an unexpected face. What started as an Instagram edit spread through South Asian meme pages before becoming a full template on Reddit's r/13ReasonsWhy.

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Overview

That Damn Smile keeps three of the four panels from episode one of 13 Reasons Why intact: two shots of narrator Hannah Baker plus the caption "That smile. That damn smile," which she uses when she first sees classmate Justin Foley3. The second panel, originally the shot of Justin, gets swapped for any other character or image, flipping the sincere romantic beat into a bait-and-switch punchline.

Common swaps pulled from Bollywood celebrities, comic book villains, and viral video subjects. Popular versions included the Heath Ledger Joker from The Dark Knight sitting in the crush slot3, and the grinning man from the Pakistani news clip "Ye Bik Gayi Hai Gormint," whose exaggerated smile fit the setup neatly5. The joke works because Hannah's narration is so earnest that almost any face in that slot reads as absurd.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Instagram (origin) / Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

Instagram user @joblessmarwadi

Date

2017

Netflix released all 13 episodes of 13 Reasons Why on March 31, 2017, and the pilot's confessional voiceover about Justin Foley became the source scene for the format3. Instagram user @joblessmarwadi posted the earliest known That Damn Smile edit on May 25, 2017, stitching together three screenshots from the scene with an unrelated grinning man dropped into the middle slot. That post pulled more than 900 likes by July 20173.

How It Spread

The template caught on inside South Asian meme circles first. On the same day as the origin post, the Facebook page Spicy Urdu Memes shared two variations, with the second version reaching over 198 reactions and 300 shares4. Within days, an edit using a screenshot from the viral Pakistani news clip "Ye Bik Gayi Hai Gormint" showed up on r/IndianPeopleFacebook5 and r/4panelcringe6.

On May 28, 2017, Reddit user NegativeKarmaSniifer posted a clean template to r/13ReasonsWhy, explaining they had built it themselves after failing to find one online. That post cleared 240 points at 93% upvoted1. Instagram meme account batmanskwad pushed the format into superhero fandom on June 13 with a Heath Ledger Joker version that pulled over 4,200 likes within a month3.

By summer, the dank-meme run was cooling. A July 5, 2017, post to r/MemeEconomy from user Liven_Bravo pitched the template as a buy and split the crowd, landing at only 43% upvoted with around 140 points7.

Timeline

2017-03-31

Netflix releases all 13 episodes of 13 Reasons Why, including the pilot scene with Hannah Baker's "That smile. That damn smile" narration.

2017-05-25

Instagram user @joblessmarwadi posts the earliest known That Damn Smile edit, replacing Justin Foley with a different smiling man.

2017-05-25

Facebook page Spicy Urdu Memes shares two variations of the format, the second pulling 198 reactions and 300+ shares.

2017-05-28

Redditor NegativeKarmaSniifer posts a clean template to r/13ReasonsWhy, reaching 240+ points at 93% upvoted.

2017-06-13

Instagram account batmanskwad posts a Heath Ledger Joker version that clears 4,200 likes within a month.

2017-07-05

Redditor Liven_Bravo posts the format to r/MemeEconomy; the pitch splits users at 43% upvoted.

How to Use This Meme

Grab the clean template that was posted to r/13ReasonsWhy in late May 20171 and swap the second panel, the shot of Justin Foley, for any other face or image. The first, third, and fourth panels (Hannah's reaction plus the "That smile. That damn smile" caption) typically stay untouched so the sincere narration lands against whatever absurd face you drop in.