Blursed images are pictures that are blessed and cursed at the same time: wholesome or funny on one level, unsettling on another. The word is a blend of “blessed” and “cursed”, and the format sits between the two older internet genres it borrows from, cursed images and blessed images.
Origin
- March 3, 2010: the word. “Blursed” was first added to Urban Dictionary on this date, meaning “simultaneously blessed and cursed by a situation, object, person, etc.” (Know Your Meme). For years it was only a comment-section reaction, not a label for images.
- 2015–2016: the parent genres. The cursed-image concept began with the Tumblr blog cursedimages in 2015 and was popularised by July 2016 through the Twitter account @cursedimages (Wikipedia). Blessed images followed on November 21, 2016, when the Twitter account @blessediimages posted a baby goat captioned “blessed image 1” (Know Your Meme).
- October 14, 2016: the first blursed image. The earliest recorded one, “Blursed Image #428617”, was shared on Twitter by @punk_werewolf. It shows a person in a fuzzy, ambiguously food-shaped costume smiling while drinking wine (Know Your Meme).
- January 2018: it catches on. Several users labelled images “blursed” through 2017, but Know Your Meme dates the real take-off to January 2018, with popularity rising from early 2018 onward.
How It’s Used
Blursed images are shared for laughs rather than to disturb or uplift, which Know Your Meme describes as the presumed aims of cursed and blessed images respectively. Most have no explainable context. The genre lives mainly on Reddit, where, according to Know Your Meme, blursed images have overtaken both cursed and blessed images in popularity and also turn up on subreddits such as r/hmmm, r/oddlyterrifying, r/memes and r/tihi. Twitter bots and personal accounts repost from r/blursedimages.
Two blursed images grew into meme formats of their own, per Know Your Meme: Mini Keanu Reeves, an edit of the actor with a shrunken body and full-size head, and Muscle Man Chasing Runner, which started on r/blursedimages.
Blessed vs Cursed vs Blursed
| Type | What it is | First dated example |
|---|---|---|
| Cursed image | A picture that seems mysterious or disturbing because of its content, poor quality or both (Wikipedia) | Tumblr blog cursedimages, 2015 |
| Blessed image | Its opposite: a cute or wholesome picture captioned “blessed image” (Know Your Meme) | @blessediimages baby goat, November 21, 2016 |
| Blursed image | A picture that fits both categories at once | ”Blursed Image #428617”, October 14, 2016 |
The Subreddit
r/blursedimages is the genre’s main home. Know Your Meme reported it had over 2.1 million members as of June 2021, with a top post of all time above 110,000 upvotes. No more recent member figure was verified for this page.