Richard Dawkins wearing a black 'We Are All Africans' t-shirt outdoors.

We Are All Africans

2015photoshop memeclassic

Published October 5, 2026

We Are All Africans is a photoshop meme built around a 2014 photograph of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins wearing a T-shirt bearing that slogan, which Tumblr users started rewriting with anime jokes, fandom slang and shitposts in February 2015. The format turned Dawkins into an unwilling signpost for every weird corner of Tumblr and became one of the site's defining photoshop templates of the mid-2010s.

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Overview

The format is simple. The front of Dawkins's shirt gets rewritten with whatever phrase a Tumblr user wants to project onto him, often an anime chest-pun reference, a piece of fandom slang, or a self-deprecating joke about shitposting3. His relaxed, slightly amused pose stays the same, which is part of the joke, and the earnest scientific slogan works as the straight line that the swapped text punches against6.

The Dawkins Foundation originally sold the shirt as merchandise referencing the Out of Africa hypothesis in paleoanthropology, which places the origin of modern Homo sapiens on the African continent2. Edits range from goofy anime callbacks to pointed takedowns of Tumblr's own discourse habits, and most keep the three-line typography of the original design so the swap reads instantly.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (source photo) / Tumblr (viral spread)
Creator
waifuthief
Date
2015

The source image came from Richard Dawkins himself. On February 27, 2014, Dawkins tweeted a photo of himself in the foundation shirt and captioned it 'We are all African apes. That's what my T-shirt means'1. The slogan sits on merchandise sold through his foundation's store to promote evolutionary biology10.

Nearly a year later, on February 5, 2015, Tumblr user waifuthief posted an edit of the photograph with the T-shirt text swapped to read 'we are all shitposters'3. The post went on to pass 25,400 notes and set the template every later edit followed6.

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How It Spread

Within a day other Tumblr users were running the format. On February 6, 2015, user sitcorn pasted the 'Mega Milk' anime chest decal across the front of Dawkins's shirt4. Three days later, shiroanagisawa swapped only the word 'Africans' for 'Jaded Teenage Girls' and racked up more than 15,500 notes5.

On February 10, 2015, the Meme Documentation blog wrote up the format in an explainer that pushed the template past its first circle of fans7. From there the edits drifted into Tumblr's self-referential discourse. On March 9, user jumex posted a version reading simply 'Problematic,' needling the site's habit of flagging content8. On May 4, sympolite put 'Down With Cis' on the shirt, pointing back to an earlier viral Tumblr post that used the same phrase9.

Later rounds kept the same framing but swapped in whatever slang or callout happened to be moving on the site that week, and the first wave of edits still pick up new notes on Tumblr years after posting6.

Timeline

2014-02-27

Richard Dawkins tweets a photo of himself in the 'We Are All Africans' foundation T-shirt with the caption about African apes.

2015-02-05

Tumblr user waifuthief posts the first known photoshop of the shirt, reading 'we are all shitposters.'

2015-02-06

Tumblr user sitcorn edits the shirt with the 'Mega Milk' anime chest decal.

2015-02-09

Tumblr user shiroanagisawa swaps 'Africans' for 'Jaded Teenage Girls.'

2015-02-10

Meme Documentation Tumblr publishes an explainer that spreads the template beyond its early audience.

2015-03-09

Tumblr user jumex posts a 'Problematic' edit skewering Tumblr discourse habits.

2015-05-04

Tumblr user sympolite posts a 'Down With Cis' edit, referencing an earlier viral Tumblr post.

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