Third World Success — Young girl washing dishes in a red basin, captioned about being happy to touch water

Third World Success

2011image macroclassic

Published August 1, 2026

Third World Success is an image macro series featuring a photo of dancing children with captions about overcoming hardships tied to life in developing countries. The format started on Quickmeme in late November 2011 as a counterpart to First World Problems, and Reddit crossposts pushed it to viral scale within days.

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Overview

Third World Success is an advice animal image macro built around a photo of dancing children, paired with optimistic captions about small victories of daily life in developing countries1. The format positions itself as the flip side of First World Problems, swapping complaints about minor inconveniences for lines about surviving real hardship3. Common captions include "Found water / wasn't contaminated," treating basic needs as personal achievements.

The image is often grouped with Success Kid as part of the broader advice-animal success template family4. Where First World Problems pokes at the pettiness of wealthy-country complaints, Third World Success flips the perspective and celebrates what people in poorer countries treat as wins1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Quickmeme / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2011

The first Third World Success image macro was posted to Quickmeme on November 27, 2011, featuring a group of dancing children captioned "Found water / wasn't contaminated"4. Reddit user somename2222 crossposted the image, where it collected over 12,000 upvotes within four days2. The macro appeared roughly two weeks after Slacktory ran a November 11 compilation called "Third World Perks: A Photo Meme," which had tested the concept of pairing images of impoverished conditions with upbeat captions3.

How It Spread

On November 28, 2011, BuzzFeed published a roundup titled "The Third World Success Kid Meme" that pulled together the strongest early examples1. Within 24 hours of the original Quickmeme post, Reddit had 230 threads about the format and Quickmeme hosted 972 submissions1. Culture blog Molempire ran its own compilation the next day, and the format moved onto Tumblr, the Body Building forums, and Meme Generator over the following weeks. By March 2012, Quickmeme counted more than 8,000 instances1.

A spin-off called Second World Success surfaced on Reddit on November 30, 2011, using a photo of a child with a Chinese flag and captions about child labor and censorship2. In June 2012, a photograph titled "Skeptical 3rd World Child," taken during a charity trip to Uganda, hit Reddit's front page and spawned another wave of related macros6.

In April 2015, TMZ reported that AT&T executive Aaron Slator was hit with a $100 million racial discrimination lawsuit from former employee Knoyme King5. The suit centered on a text message Slator sent that contained a racially insensitive Third World Success macro, discovered by a colleague while transferring his data to a new phone5. AT&T fired Slator the day after the story broke5.

How to Use This Meme

The format typically uses the dancing children photo, with captions running in the standard advice-animal two-line structure. The setup describes a moment of hardship, and the punchline reframes a basic need such as clean water, food, or avoiding illness, as a personal victory1.

Frequently Asked Questions