What is Unknown Pleasures?

Unknown Pleasures is the 1979 debut Joy Division album whose Peter Saville sleeve of stacked pulsar waves became an exploitable meme and T-shirt template.

Where did Unknown Pleasures come from?

Saville based the cover on radio pulse data from pulsar CP 1919, pulled from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy and inverted to white-on-black.

What does Unknown Pleasures mean?

As a meme, it points to the sleeve itself as a format, where people swap in other silhouettes, pair the waves with unrelated jokes, or riff on shirt wearers who don't know the band.

How do you use Unknown Pleasures?

People overlay the stacked waves onto a new shape like Mickey Mouse, replace the pulsar with other content, or make jokes about Tumblr-era shirt wearers, like Adam Kurtz's "I've seen it on Tumblr" parody.

Is Unknown Pleasures still popular?

The sleeve is still a steady design reference since the 2012 Disney flap, with later edits pairing it with newer memes like "Pee Is Stored In the Balls".

Unknown Pleasures

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Published October 4, 2026

The Unknown Pleasures album cover, Peter Saville's 1979 sleeve for Joy Division's debut record, became one of the most recognizable images in post-punk before escaping the album entirely to live online as an exploitable template. By the early 2010s, the stacked pulsar waves showed up on Disney merchandise, Tumblr parody shirts, and listicles, turning a radio astronomy diagram into a go-to meme format.

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Overview

Peter Saville's sleeve stacks 100 radio pulse readings from pulsar CP 1919, a graphic drummer Stephen Morris pulled from the 1977 Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy3. Saville flipped the diagram from black-on-white to white-on-black, giving it the stark look that fans copied onto shirts for decades1.

As a meme, Unknown Pleasures works as a visual exploitable. People swap the pulsar waves for other silhouettes, overlay the lines on unrelated subjects, or build jokes around people wearing the shirt without knowing the band4. Common formats include Mickey Mouse mashups, pop culture spoofs, and digs at fashion-first fans who claim they found the sleeve on Tumblr3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Album artwork (source) / Tumblr and blogs (viral spread)

Date

1979

Joy Division released Unknown Pleasures on June 15th, 1979, with sleeve art by Peter Saville4. The waveforms came from CP 1919, the first radio pulsar discovered, originally charted in a January 1971 issue of Scientific American before being reprinted in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy that Morris flipped through3. The pulsar imagery is in the public domain, which later let brands reproduce it without permission1.

How It Spread

The sleeve became a shirt staple through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, which set up the parody wave of the early 2010s4. In January 2012, Disney put a "Waves Mickey Mouse" T-shirt on its online store for $24.95, superimposing Mickey's head onto Saville's pulsar design1. Pushback from the indie community was fast, Disney pulled the shirt, and resale copies climbed past $200 on eBay2. Joy Division bassist Peter Hook called the Disney crossover "a funny one" and told Billboard he tried to buy one before they sold out1.

On May 21st, 2013, Laughing Squid wrote up a parody shirt by designer Adam Kurtz that reproduced the sleeve under the text "What is this? I've seen it on Tumblr"6. The same day, Buzzfeed ran a listicle collecting 14 pop culture spoofs built on the design3. A single-topic Tumblr called "People Wearing a Joy Division Shirt" compiled candid photos of shirt wearers in the wild7, and a 20wattsmag piece needled fans who wore the shirt for the look rather than the music8. Later edits paired the waves with unrelated text, including memes referencing Michael Flynn's redacted Russian investigation memo and "Pee Is Stored In the Balls"4.

Timeline

1979-06-15

Joy Division releases Unknown Pleasures with Peter Saville's pulsar sleeve.

2012-01

Disney launches a Mickey Mouse T-shirt based on the sleeve, then pulls it after backlash.

2013-05-21

Laughing Squid covers Adam Kurtz's "I've seen it on Tumblr" parody shirt, and Buzzfeed posts a listicle of 14 pop culture spoofs the same day.

2013-09

20wattsmag publishes a satirical piece on people wearing the shirt for fashion over music.

How to Use This Meme

Creators typically keep Saville's stacked white waves on black and swap one element: the waveform silhouette (Mickey ears, logos, cartoon characters), the text wrapped around it (unrelated quotes, memes), or the context (parody shirts aimed at the Tumblr crowd). The joke often rides on how recognizable the shape is even when the pulsar is gone3.