2Slimey Side Profile Memes All Started With One Very Backlit Photo

I’ll admit it: until this week I could not have picked 2Slimey out of a lineup, and now I could do it in the dark, which is more or less the whole point of 2Slimey side profile memes. They all come from one concert photo of the underground rapper, shot from the side and lit from behind so hard he became a pure black silhouette holding a microphone. The meme is that outline getting treated like a cartoon character, a corporate logo and a homework assignment.

The Photo Itself

Photographer Yahdel Aran shot him at Strong Festival in Las Vegas on October 30 and posted the set on November 1. Flip through Yahdel Aran’s photo set and most of it is exactly what you want from a concert photographer, including a shot of him mid-kick above the crowd with his blond hair flying. But the silhouette slide is the one that got out. An X user put the two pictures side by side and said he needed to fire his camera man, and that post pulled more than 149,000 likes and 9.2 million views.

First Came Disbelief

The first wave wasn’t even jokes so much as people staring. A post saying the picture was genuinely making its author cry passed 16,000 likes, and under the original, one commenter told the rapper to “SLIME YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER,” which I would pay to watch. Another said it felt like seeing the Mona Lisa get painted. I’m with that person, because I have taken about 900 photos of my dog and none of them have ever started anything.

Then people started comparing outlines, because a black shape on a bright background turns anyone into a kid playing a guessing game. One account traced it into a smooth blob, and another set it beside a pair of cartoon heads in profile with a simple “good god bro.”

2Slimey Side Profile Memes Spread

By November 2 the joke had a format. Daily Hyperpop posted a fake announcement that the picture was his new Spotify profile image, and for the record that isn’t real, though I believed it for longer than I’d like to admit. That night @kyrsive quote-posted the silhouette with the old rule that a good character design can be identified by its silhouette alone, which remains the kindest and funniest thing anyone has said about this picture.

People Started Redrawing It

Eventually people stopped reposting the picture and started making their own. One edit lost the hair and simplified the shape until it stopped being a rapper and became the logo for a regional bank. Best of all, someone walked up to a classroom chalkboard and rendered the whole thing in careful chalk strokes, with a Taco Bell flyer sitting on the desk like a museum placard. That’s the one I keep going back to, because nobody puts that much effort into being mean.

My prediction is that 2Slimey ends up with the last laugh. Matching profile pictures were already circling on TikTok by November 3, and a silhouette this recognizable is the kind of thing artists pay branding agencies to invent. I give it until the next tour before it’s on a shirt, and I’ll be honest, I’d wear it.

The person who drew that silhouette with no hair should take notes from Photoshop Fails Are a Crime Where the Background Always Testifies, and the fake Spotify post has a spiritual cousin in Nicki Minaj Chucky Memes Began When the Doll’s Own Creator Said Imposter. Neither one involves a chalkboard, sadly.