In an Apple Store, have you ever seen a picture of a kid dressed up as a monkey using an iPhone? You may have seen the Little Gay Monkey Boy at Apple Store meme, which is one of the most well-known and long-lasting internet jokes.
This idea has been around for more than ten years and has been used in a huge number of different ways. Where did it come from, though? Who is the boy with the monkey? What makes him g*y? This piece will talk about where this funny and mysterious meme came from, how it spread, and what effect it had.
About
Little gay monkey Boy at Apple Store is a picture of a child in a tight monkey costume using a display iPhone in an Apple Store. The child is standing in a “g*y” position, with one leg straight and the other bent at the knee.
It was first posted on the web in 2010, and over the next ten years, picture macros and Photoshops used it a lot as a way to make money.
Origin
No one knows where the picture of the monkey boy came from for sure, but the oldest known upload of it was to ZanyPickle on June 18, 2010, in a “grab bag” collection meme dump post. It’s not clear and doesn’t look like this is the original file (see below).
The tabloid Prodigy posted it again on June 24 as their “picture of the day,” and Krapps did the same thing on June 29 in a post called “Monkey Boy – The Legend Continues,” which played up the mystery of the monkey boy.
Spread out
The picture went around the internet in the 2010s. One such picture was uploaded to /r/pics on June 20, 2012, and was called “Monkey Boy at Apple Store.”
What The F^ck G*y Little Monkey
In September 2019, Windows 93 on MySpace shared a picture of the monkey boy with the words “what the fuck g*y little monkey” written below, on the left. When @reactjpg shared the image macro again on Twitter on September 17, they changed “fuck” to “cool” and cropped the meme badly (see below, right).
Many Photoshop users used different versions of the phrase to make their own versions of the picture macro, often switching out the monkey boy for a different character or setting him in a different place. Such as, on September 23, Reddit user weedIizard shared a Photoshop file on /r/traves that swapped out the monkey boy for a Minecraft character wearing a monkey skin (see below).
Chickenbootsauce, a YouTuber, shared a video on October 20th of an original song that was kind of about the g*y little monkey boy image. The video used a little monkey image. The song with Keeyoki and Nate was uploaded to SoundCloud by Moe Lester but was later taken down, as stated in the description of the file.
Instagram user jacks_spam_n_such shared a version on January 13, 2020, that swapped out the boy for Kanbaru from the anime Bakemonogatari. It got over 800 likes in just under two years (see below, left). Chaz4220 shared a Photoshopped picture of the boy in a Gamestop on /r/jschlatt on April 9th. It got over 190 votes in just under two years (see picture on the right).
The meme lasted until 2021 and kept giving rise to new versions. On March 3, the Instagram account @hykeq shared a version of the image macro with Minecraft music over it. It has been seen over 54,000 times in eight months (see below).
