Disappointed Meme
The disappointed meme is a photograph of a man in a stadium crowd standing with his hands on his hips, staring flatly at a mistake somebody else just made. It captions silent, unimpressed judgement of an avoidable failure.
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Where the disappointed meme comes from
This is one of the rare viral photographs with a date, a venue and a scoreboard attached. On 12 June 2019, Pakistan played Australia in a group match of the ICC Cricket World Cup at the County Ground in Taunton. Australia posted 307 for 7; Pakistan were bowled out for 266 and lost by 41 runs.
The moment that made the image happened in the field. Accounts of the game place the fielder Asif Ali putting down a catch, not for the first time that day, and the director cut from the pitch to the stands for a crowd reaction. What the camera found was a man in a plaid shirt and a navy gilet, hands planted on his hips, jaw set, radiating a very specific and very silent kind of disappointment. He did not shout. He did not put his head in his hands. He simply looked.
The still was clipped and shared within minutes. He was identified soon afterwards as Muhammad Sarim Akhtar, and the identification changed his life in a small, funny way. He has described the aftermath as thousands of friend requests and a phone ringing through the night, and he has been consistently good humoured about it since, pointing out that the expression translates everywhere because every culture has a version of watching somebody make an unforced error. The image travelled far beyond cricket audiences, picking up heavy use in countries including Uganda, Botswana, Malaysia and Indonesia.
He also monetised it, at least in part. He has spoken about being offered a role in a Coca-Cola advertising campaign alongside the former Pakistan fast bowler Wasim Akram, and about fielding offers to sell the image as an NFT. He now runs public accounts where he posts memes of his own face.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 12 June 2019 | Pakistan v Australia at the County Ground, Taunton. Australia win by 41 runs. The crowd cutaway goes out live. |
| Same day | The still spreads on Twitter and Facebook as a reaction image, at first inside cricket audiences. |
| Days afterwards | The fan is identified as Muhammad Sarim Akhtar. He describes being flooded with messages once his name is out. |
| Later in 2019 | Use spreads well outside cricket, notably in East Africa and South East Asia, and template versions appear on the major meme generators. |
| Since | He appears in advertising, is approached over image rights and NFT deals, and posts memes of himself. |
What it means and when to use it
The template encodes a very narrow feeling, which is exactly why it works. It is not anger, and it is not sadness. It is the flat, wordless stare of a person who saw the mistake coming, could not prevent it, and now has to stand in the consequences. Two conditions have to hold: the failure belongs to someone else, and it was avoidable.
| Question | Correct use | Wrong use |
|---|---|---|
| Whose mistake was it | Someone else, clearly identified. | Your own. The pose is a spectator pose, so self-blame reads as confusion. |
| How avoidable was it | Entirely. One job, done badly. | Bad luck, illness, accident. Judging misfortune makes the poster look cruel. |
| Who else is affected | A group. The bottom box is usually a crowd. | Nobody. Without collateral damage there is nothing to be disappointed on behalf of. |
| What is the tone | Silent. He is not saying a word. | Shouty captions. Adding rage to the picture fights the face. |
| What are the stakes | Low to medium. Sport, work, group chats. | Tragedy or crime. The joke depends on the failure not mattering very much. |
Captions that work
Two text boxes. Top box is the unforced error; bottom box is the audience that had to witness it. Do not put a joke in both. The bottom line should be a plain nod at the people standing there.
- sportTeammate skies an open goal from two metres Everyone who left work early to watch this
- workHe hits reply all on a four hundred person thread The entire IT department
- foodShe asks what everyone wants, then orders only for herself The four people who answered
- Driver in front waits out a full green arrow The nine cars behind him
- travelFriend books the flights for the wrong month The group chat that sent the dates twice
- Roommate puts the empty carton back in the fridge Me at 7am, holding dry cereal
- workHe explains my own job back to me in the meeting The manager who hired me for it
- gamingSquad picks the same losing strategy a fourth time The one person who called it
- Uses the last sheet of printer paper and walks off Everybody else in the queue
- Announces the surprise party in the shared calendar The thirty people who kept it quiet for a month
- workSaves it as final version really final v3 Whoever opens that folder next
- Tells the whole cinema the twist on the way in Two hundred strangers
Variants and close relatives
| Format | Source | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Disappointed Muhammad Sarim Akhtar | Same broadcast still | Not a different meme, just a different listing name on the template sites. Same image, same use. |
| Blinking White Guy | A 2013 charity livestream | Disbelief rather than judgement. Use it when the reaction is confusion, not weary contempt. |
| Unsettled Tom | A Tom and Jerry frame | Suspicion. Tom has just noticed something is off; this man already knows and has given up. |
| Side-eye reaction images | Various | Aimed at a person in the room. This template is aimed at an event out on a field, at a distance. |
| This Is Fine | K.C. Green, 2013 | Denial of your own disaster. The disappointed man is neither in denial nor responsible. |
Common mistakes
- Calling him Indian. He is Pakistani and was in the crowd supporting Pakistan. The label follows the image around and it is simply wrong.
- Using it for your own mistake. The whole pose belongs to a person who had no control over what just happened.
- Aiming it at bad luck. A dropped catch is an error. A flight cancelled in a storm is not. Judgement needs fault to land on.
- Two punchlines. If the bottom box also tries to be funny, the picture has nothing left to say.
- Explaining the feeling. Captions that spell out how annoyed everybody is duplicate the face. Name the event, name the witnesses, stop.
- Treating it as a rage face. He is calm. Pair it with calm.
Limits and etiquette
Be clear about what this image is: an unposed photograph of a real, living, named private individual who went to a cricket match and came home as global shorthand for contempt. He has taken it well, publicly and repeatedly, which is a genuine piece of luck. That luck does not transfer. The same courtesy is not owed to you by the next stranger you crop out of a crowd shot.
There is a rights layer too. The frame is broadcast footage from a televised international fixture, so the picture has a copyright owner separate from the man in it, and his face carries commercial value that he has been paid for at least once. Ordinary captioning is normal internet behaviour. Selling merchandise with his face on it, or building an advertisement around it, is a different act with a different set of consequences.
The template frame reproduced here is third-party material, hosted for captioning only; rights holders can use the takedown policy at /dmca/.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the man in the disappointed meme?
He is Muhammad Sarim Akhtar, a Pakistan cricket supporter who was filmed in the crowd during a World Cup match in England in 2019.
Where does the disappointed meme come from?
It comes from television coverage of Pakistan against Australia at the County Ground in Taunton on 12 June 2019, moments after a catch went down in the field.
What is he reacting to?
Accounts of the moment say the fielder Asif Ali had just dropped a catch, and the broadcast cut away from the pitch to the crowd for a reaction shot.
Is he Indian?
No. He is Pakistani and he was at the ground supporting Pakistan. Mislabelling him as Indian is the single most common error attached to this picture.
What does the disappointed meme mean?
It is silent judgement of somebody else. It works when a person had one simple job, did it badly, and everybody watching had to live with the result.
How many text boxes does the disappointed template have?
Two. The top box names the avoidable mistake and the bottom box names the people who had to stand there and watch it happen.
Did he mind becoming a meme?
He has talked about it warmly, describing thousands of messages arriving once he was identified, and he now posts memes of himself on his own accounts.
When should I not use this template?
Avoid it for your own mistakes and for genuine misfortune. It is a spectator sneer, so it lands badly on people who were unlucky rather than careless.