About
Unhelpful High School Teacher is an advice animal image macro series featuring a stock photo of a woman standing in front of a map of the world and a chalkboard. The captioned text describes lazy or irresponsible teaching methods, as well as cliche expressions and retorts frequently used by teachers in interacting with students.
Origin
The base image comes from a Corbis Images[9] stock photo titled “Teacher Pointing at Map of World.” The first Quickmeme[1] submission was uploaded on September 3rd, 2011. The image was posted to the advice animals subreddit[2] the same day in a thread by Me_bender titled “Unhelpful High School Teacher.” It received 2163 upvotes and an overall score of 665.
Spread
Several examples were posted in a thread in the Mabination[6] forums on September 4th, 2011. The first single topic blog on Tumblr titled “Fuck Yeah Unhelpful High School Teacher”[7] was created on September 5th. On September 6th, derivative round-ups were published to BuzzFeed[3] and Memebase.[4] Smosh.com[5] published a “best of” collection on September 8th. Urban Savior[14] included it in their 25 Most Hilarious Memes of 2011 list and in January 2012, a series appeared on humor site Runt of the Web.[11]
As of February 2012, there are 370 submissions related to “unhelpful teacher” in the advice animals subreddit[8] and over 6600 instances on Quickmeme.[10]
Notable Examples
Derivative: Teacher’s Rebuttals
On September 10th, 2011, Tumblr user and English education student angewe posted a series[12] of 10 Unhelpful High School Teacher instances with her response placed in red text in between the captions, receiving 333 notes. The series was linked on Buzzfeed[13] two days later.
Template
Search Interest
Search peaked in September and again in December, coinciding with end of year lists. It is currently on the rise
External Links
[1] Quickmeme – Unhelpful High School Teacher first instance
[2] Reddit – Unhelpful High School Teacher
[3] BuzzFeed – 17 Examples Of Unhelpful High School Teacher
[4] Memebase – Introducing: Terrible Teacher
[5] Smosh – Best Of The ‘Unhelpful High School Teacher’ Meme!
[6] Mabination – Unhelpful High School Teacher
[7] Tumblr – Fuck Yeah Unhelpful High School Teacher
[8] Reddit – unhelpful teacher search results
[9] Corbis – Teacher Pointing at Map of World
[10] Quickmeme – Unhelpful High School Teacher
[11] Runt of the Web – Unhelpful Teacher Meme
[12] Tumblr – Here, I fixed most of them for you.
[13] Buzzfeed – Unhelpful High School Teacher Meme [Teacher’s Rebuttal]
[14] Urban Savior – 25 of The Most Hilarious Internet Memes of 2011