First Time Meme
The first time meme is a two box reaction template built from a gallows scene in the 2018 film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, in which a condemned cowboy glances at the weeping man beside him and asks, first time?
Make your own first time meme
Drag any line on the image to move it.
Where the first time meme comes from
Get the source right, because this one is misattributed constantly. It is not from 127 Hours, and it is not from any other film in the actor’s back catalogue. It comes from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen brothers anthology western released through Netflix in November 2018. James Franco plays an unnamed cowboy and failed bank robber in the segment Near Algodones. Standing on a gallows alongside three other condemned men, he notices that the man next to him is crying, leans over with something close to sympathy, and asks two words.
The meme predates the film. Netflix released the trailer on 12 September 2018, and the line sits about a minute and forty seconds in, which was long enough for it to be lifted before anybody had seen the picture. The first viral iteration is dated to 17 September 2018, five days later, from the Twitter account @Ayub_dz. That post used the line as a punchline about a grim news-cycle scenario, which is worth knowing as history and worth not copying as a template.
By the time the film reached Netflix in November, the screencap was already circulating independently of it, and through 2019 it settled into the role it still occupies: the standard image for a veteran calmly addressing a newcomer who is horrified by something the veteran stopped noticing years ago.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 12 September 2018 | Netflix releases the trailer for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. The line appears around the 1:40 mark. |
| 17 September 2018 | Earliest documented viral use, from the Twitter account @Ayub_dz, five days after the trailer. |
| November 2018 | The film is released. The screencap is already spreading on its own. |
| 2019 onward | Settles into its standard use as the veteran-versus-newcomer punchline across professional and fandom communities. |
| 2020s | Becomes a stock format in workplace, developer and student meme accounts, where the veteran framing fits naturally. |
A note on scope. The frame shows a named living actor playing a fictional character. This page documents the format only. It describes the layout and how people caption it, and it makes no claims about the performer.
What it means and when to use it
The format has one job: to establish that something appalling is, for the speaker, completely normal. The comedy is not in the appalling thing. It is in the calm. Somebody is having a legitimate crisis, and next to them stands a person who has had this crisis so many times it has become weather.
That means the format needs two parties and a gap between them, and the gap has to be experience rather than intelligence. This is not a template for calling someone stupid. It is a template for recognising that you have been somewhere so long that your baseline has quietly become deranged, and a newcomer is the only reason you noticed. The best versions have a note of self-indictment in them: the veteran is not superior, the veteran is damaged.
| Situation | Right use | Wrong use |
|---|---|---|
| Box one | A newcomer visibly distressed by something specific. | A vague situation with nobody in it. The format needs a person to be upset. |
| Box two | The group or person for whom that thing is routine. | A repeat of box one in other words. Box two must be a different party. |
| The gap between them | Experience. One has been there longer. | Intelligence. Calling the newcomer stupid is a different, meaner joke and the frame does not support it. |
| Severity | Bad enough to justify the distress, ordinary enough to be survivable. | Genuine tragedy. The frame is a gallows and leaning on real suffering makes the joke curdle fast. |
| Tone | Weary solidarity, almost kind. | Gatekeeping. Sneering at a newcomer inverts the format and loses the entire joke. |
Captions that work
Two boxes. Box one is the person losing it. Box two is whoever stopped reacting to that years ago. Keep box two short and flat.
- devNew hire watching the deploy fail on a Friday The rest of the team
- travelTourist complaining about the humidity Everyone who lives here
- Visitor who cannot believe the train is delayed again Daily commuters
- schoolFirst years seeing the reading list Everyone in second year
- workPerson shocked that the printer jammed The entire office
- parentingNew parent hearing the 3am scream Parents of three
- petsNew cat owner watching it knock a glass off the table Anyone who has ever had a cat
- moneySomeone opening their first winter electricity bill Everyone who rents an old flat
- workJunior analyst finding fourteen hidden tabs in the spreadsheet Finance
- friendsFriend who just realised the group holiday has no plan The group
- New driver entering the roundabout Every local
- schoolSomeone hearing the fire alarm go off mid-exam Third years
Variants and close relatives
| Format | Source | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| This Is Fine | A 2013 webcomic panel by KC Green | Denial rather than acclimatisation. The dog is pretending the fire is not happening; the cowboy has simply stopped minding. |
| Ah shit, here we go again | A widely quoted video game line | Resignation about repetition with no newcomer in it. One party instead of two. |
| First Day on the Internet Kid | An image macro of a child at a laptop | Points at naive enthusiasm rather than at a survivor. It mocks the newcomer, which this format should not. |
| Blinking White Guy | A 2013 livestream clip of Drew Scanlon | Disbelief in the moment. It is the newcomer reaction, not the veteran one, and the two pair well together. |
| Sweet summer child | A phrase rather than an image | Same veteran-to-newcomer relationship expressed in text. Useful where an image is not appropriate, but it carries more condescension. |
Common mistakes
- Attributing it to the wrong film. It is from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, 2018. Confident misattributions to other Franco films circulate widely and are simply wrong.
- Putting the same party in both boxes. The format is a contrast between two groups. If box two is a rephrasing of box one, nothing happens.
- Using it to sneer. The line works because it is delivered almost gently. Turn it into gatekeeping and the whole thing reads as bullying a beginner.
- Picking something too mild. If nobody would be upset by box one, there is no distress for the veteran to be calm about.
- Picking something genuinely tragic. The frame is literally an execution. Real suffering in the caption removes the safety margin that makes the joke work at all.
- Over-explaining in box two. The punchline is the flatness. Name the group in a few words and stop.
- Writing the line into the caption. The words are already in the image in most template packs. Repeating them wastes a box.
Limits and etiquette
Honest limits. The frame depicts an execution, and the joke depends on holding that at exactly the right distance: absurd enough to be safe, dark enough to have an edge. Push the caption toward a real atrocity, a real death or a live news event and the distance disappears. The earliest viral use of this template did exactly that, which is a useful reminder that the format has always been one caption away from being unpleasant.
The format itself is in reasonable health. It is not new, it is not fashionable, and it has been thoroughly absorbed by professional meme accounts, but the underlying observation about acclimatisation is durable and the image reads clearly at small sizes. Its most common failure now is not staleness but tone: too many versions use it to look down on beginners, which is the opposite of what the scene is doing.
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
What is the first time meme?
It is a two box reaction template used to say that something horrifying to a newcomer is completely routine for the people already there.
What movie is the first time meme from?
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the 2018 Coen brothers anthology western made for Netflix. The scene is in the segment Near Algodones.
Is the first time meme from 127 Hours?
No. That is a common misattribution. The frame comes from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, released in 2018.
When did the first time meme start?
The trailer went up on 12 September 2018 and the earliest documented viral use is dated 17 September 2018, before the film itself was released.
Who says the line in the scene?
An unnamed cowboy played by James Franco, standing on a gallows next to a man who is crying.
How many text boxes does the first time template have?
Two. Box one names the person who is distressed and box two names the group who stopped reacting long ago.
What does the first time meme mean?
It means your normal is somebody else emergency. The joke is the calm of the veteran, not the severity of the thing itself.
Is the first time meme still used in 2026?
Yes. It is a settled workhorse in workplace, student and developer meme accounts because the acclimatisation joke does not date.