Galaxy Brain, also called Expanding Brain, is “a multi-panel exploitable image series comparing the brain size” of a person to the ideas beside it (Know Your Meme). Each panel shows a bigger, brighter brain next to a supposedly smarter idea. Know Your Meme says it is “more often used in an ironic sense to imply the opposite”: the cosmic final brain marks the most absurd idea.
Origin
- 2016, “whomst”. The Daily Dot says an Urban Dictionary user named “lightning guy” coined “whomst” in 2016 as a joke about intellectual pretense. It “eventually found its way to Reddit’s /r/dankmemes.”
- Late January 2017, the brain grid. Know Your Meme says the format began as part of the Whomst meme, pairing “derivations of the word ‘Who’” with increasingly elaborate brain images. One early example “was posted to /r/dankmemes on Reddit on January 31st, 2017”.
- February 1, 2017, first press. The Daily Dot explained the joke: if “whom” sounds smart, “whomst” would be even smarter, “and ‘whomst’d’ would be for absolute geniuses only.” It described a grid “showing a brain in three (or four) states of increasing arousal.”
- February 2017, new subjects. Variations kept “appearing on /r/dankmemes and /r/MemeEconomy throughout the month of February”, and “other subjects were applied to Expanding Brain, such as video games and politics” (Know Your Meme). The Daily Dot says the meme then spread to platforms like Twitter, where it “began to adopt a more sarcastic tone”.
How It’s Used
A post lists three to five ideas on the same topic, from ordinary to ridiculous, each beside a bigger brain. The joke depends on irony: the reader is meant to see that the “enlightened” final idea is the worst one.
The Brain Ladder
The original who/whom ladder, as the Daily Dot described it:
| Step | Brain | Original (Daily Dot, Feb 2017) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Small | who |
| 2 | Lit up | whom |
| 3 | Glowing | whomst (“even smarter”) |
| 4 | Galaxy | whomst’d (“for absolute geniuses only”) |
Galaxy-Brained as an Adjective
The meme’s top panel gave English a slang term. Wiktionary defines a galaxy brain as “Someone who comes up with galaxy-brain (seemingly profound, but actually absurd) ideas”, and labels galaxy-brained as internet slang, “usually sarcastic”. A “galaxy-brained take” is an argument too clever by half.
See also #ExpandingBrain.