The Viral Rise of the Distracted Boyfriend Meme

The moment that stock photo of a guy ogling another woman—while his girlfriend looks on, shocked—started popping up everywhere, people were baffled. Why was a random, cheesy photo suddenly the internet’s sharpest take on loyalty, desire, and distraction? Here’s how a single stock image became the most viral meme of 2017, sparked copyright drama, and even triggered official complaints.

Photographer Antonio Guillem shot the iconic image in mid-2015 on the streets of Girona, Catalonia. Guillem is from Barcelona and says the shoot was designed to represent infidelity in a playful, fun way. The two main models appear in the stock photo under stage names: “Mario” plays the distracted boyfriend, and “Laura” is the spurned girlfriend. The woman in red, who turns heads, was cast specifically for her role as the “other woman.” Guillem uploaded the image to Shutterstock with the description “Disloyal man walking with his girlfriend and looking amazed at another seductive girl.”

For nearly two years, the photo languished in the stock image wilderness. Then, in January 2017, a Turkish progressive rock Facebook group posted it as a meme. In their version, the man was labeled “Phil Collins,” distracted from “progressive rock” by “pop music.” That joke got reposted to an English Facebook page, then migrated to Twitter by February 2, 2017. Later that month, the original stock image was posted to Instagram and drew almost 30,000 likes.

The meme truly exploded on August 19, 2017. That’s when a Twitter user labeled the man “the youth,” the girlfriend “capitalism,” and the other woman “socialism.” Another user copied the format and scored over 35,000 retweets and almost 100,000 likes. Suddenly, the image was everywhere—Twitter, Reddit, Facebook—each time with new labels, from biblical allusions to corporate mergers.

But the models themselves were unaware at first. “Mario” and “Laura” only found out when people began spamming their social media with screenshots and memes. Guillem himself admitted to The Guardian that he “didn’t even know what a meme is until recently.” Neither he nor the models imagined their photo would get this kind of media impact.

With ubiquity came controversy. Antonio Guillem publicly stated that his images were subject to copyright laws and shouldn’t be used without a license. He said most uses were in “good faith,” and he wouldn’t take action, except in extreme cases. Still, the legal ambiguity—memes are by definition shared, remixed, and often unlicensed—meant that millions of posts technically violated copyright. This tension between viral fame and intellectual property rights became a flashpoint, especially when brands began using the meme in marketing.

And that’s where the backlash heated up. In September 2018, Sweden’s advertising ombudsman ruled that a local internet provider broke anti-discrimination rules when it used the meme. In this ad, the company’s jobs were depicted as the alluring woman, with the girlfriend as “your current workplace.” The ombudsman determined this portrayal violated gender discrimination standards.

Some critics, like Joe McCarthy from Global Citizen, argued the meme’s underlying photo actually depicted “sexual harassment,” and that most uses failed to transcend the image’s inherent sexism. Despite this, the meme was celebrated by outlets like The Washington Post, which named it to its “Meme Hall of Fame of 2017,” and the Shorty Awards, which crowned it Best Meme of 2017.

Meanwhile, Guillem’s photo shoot spawned dozens of spin-offs. People tracked down other stock photos with the same trio, inventing backstories and alternate scenarios. Others traced the meme’s lineage to art history, citing Joshua Reynolds’ 1761 painting “David Garrick Between Tragedy and Comedy” and even a scene from Charlie Chaplin’s 1922 film “Pay Day” as spiritual ancestors.

So, with the meme’s legal status still murky, its models recognizable worldwide, and new versions popping up every month, one question remains: what happens if a brand gets sued for a meme everyone’s already seen millions of times?