Crying Jordan

"Crying Jordan" represents the ultimate convergence of sports iconography and internet meme culture, transforming one of basketball's most vulnerable moments into the digital age's most versatile expression of defeat, disappointment, and schadenfreude.

The source image was captured by Associated Press photographer Stephan Savoia during Michael Jordan's Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony on September 11, 2009, at Symphony Hall in Springfield, Massachusetts (Wikipedia, 2025). During his 23-minute speech, Jordan became emotional while reflecting on his unparalleled basketball career, delivering thank-yous and verbal jabs with characteristic intensity. Savoia described the moment: "And everybody turns around and looks, and sees what's going on, and they're scrambling for their discs to put back in their cameras. By the time they do, he had wiped his eyes, he was done crying... Nobody else had the picture" (Yahoo Sports, 2019).

The photograph initially remained dormant for years. Its first documented meme usage occurred in 2012, when the image was used unmodified to comment on Jordan's decision to purchase the Charlotte Bobcats NBA franchise, with the caption "Why / Did I buy the Bobcats?" This early version appeared on MemeCrunch with the title "Sad Michael Jordan" (Know Your Meme, 2015).

The true transformation into the "Crying Jordan" format began in 2014 when users on internet message board Boxden.com started using the photoshopped head alone, superimposing Jordan's crying face onto images of athletes and others who had suffered various mishaps (Wikipedia, 2025). This innovation of isolating and transplanting just the crying face proved crucial to the meme's versatility and eventual dominance.

The meme began attracting mainstream media attention in late 2015 and early 2016, achieving global recognition and becoming what ESPN called "the greatest sports meme of all time" (ESPN, 2022). The format's psychological appeal stemmed from what media critics identified as the incongruity of seeing "the ultimate alpha [male] in a vulnerable position" - a typically stoic, dominant competitor expressing raw emotion (Wikipedia, 2025).

The meme's cultural penetration was extraordinary. It was used not only in sports contexts but expanded to politics, entertainment, and everyday disappointments. The format became so ubiquitous that various athletes began using it self-deprecatingly on social media after poor performances, including Steph Curry, Jon Jones, and Roberto Luongo (Wikipedia, 2025).

The meme reached perhaps its qualitative and quantitative peak on April 4, 2016, during the NCAA National Championship when Villanova defeated Jordan's alma mater, North Carolina, on Kris Jenkins' buzzer-beater. With Jordan himself in attendance, the internet exploded with Crying Jordan variations, and Google Trends analytics showed interest in the meme more than doubled around this time (ESPN, 2022).

The meme achieved remarkable mainstream recognition when President Barack Obama referenced it during Jordan's Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony on November 22, 2016. Obama jokingly referred to Jordan as being "more than just an internet meme," marking what Know Your Meme called "a historical moment in internet meme history" (ESPN, 2022).

The format's influence extended beyond digital spaces into physical culture, inspiring merchandise like the "Crying Kicks" Tumblr blog featuring Air Jordan sneakers with the crying face embroidered on the tongue. An open-source mobile app called "The Crying Jordan Meme Generator" was developed, downloaded by thousands of users seeking to easily superimpose the image onto other photos.

Jordan himself eventually acknowledged the meme's persistence and his own complicated relationship with it. During his eulogy for Kobe Bryant on February 24, 2020, Jordan began crying and jokingly acknowledged the inevitable result: "Now he's got me [crying]. I'll have to look at another Crying Meme... I told my wife I wasn't going to do this because I didn't want to see that for the next three or four years" (Wikipedia, 2025).