Meme Shirts: 12 Funny Meme Tees and Where Each Meme Came From

A meme shirt is a tee printed with a meme's image, catchphrase or format, and the best ones add a twist, such as a new character in a familiar format. This guide covers 12 funny meme shirts from RIPT's independent artists, plus where each meme came from, who owns it and how to pick a tee that lasts.

Every design below was live and in stock on 27 October 2026, and every artist is named. The meme histories come from creators' own pages, interviews, court summaries and encyclopedias, and where the record is unclear we say so instead of picking a date.

All 12 funny meme shirts at a glance

Where each meme came from

A shirt is funnier when you know the story. This table gives the earliest documented use of each meme these shirts riff on, with a note on how sure we are. The dates for the Drake and "Deal with it" memes are less settled than the rest, so we word them with care.

Woman Yelling at a Cat shirts

This meme pairs two unrelated pictures: a reality-TV screenshot and a cat at a dinner table. Smudge's owner posted his photo to Tumblr in 2018 with the caption "He no like vegetals," and the 2011 clip went viral on its own long before anyone paired the two. The meme won the Meme category at the 12th Shorty Awards. Because the format needs only two roles, a yelling one and a bemused one, it works with almost any pair of characters.

Artist boltfromtheblue's Woman Yelling At Cat Part 1 is the yelling half of the meme, printed in an ugly sweater knit look with a snowflake border. Artist artoflucas swaps in superheroes. In Yelling Bat At Cat, Batman and Robin take the yelling role and Catwoman sits at the table with a plate and a glass. In Mutant Yelling, Cyclops points and shouts while Jean Grey holds him back and Wolverine sits where the cat usually is, with a plate and a mug. More crossovers like these live in RIPT's Batman graphic tees and Marvel graphic tees.

Distracted Boyfriend shirts

The original is a stock photo, not a joke someone drew. Antonio Guillem, a Barcelona-based photographer, shot it in Girona in mid-2015, and the models used the stage names Mario and Laura. It went viral after a 19 August 2017 tweet labeled the three people "youth," "capitalism" and "socialism," and it won the Meme category at the 10th Shorty Awards. Because the format is three roles with labels, it fits almost any joke.

Zascanauta flips the joke in Undistracted Boyfriend: a boyfriend who only has eyes for his girlfriend, with hearts over their heads and a glaring woman in red beside them. Artist artoflucas draws Wolverine up front, with Jean Grey and Cyclops close behind him, in Distracted JEEEAN, above huge "JEEEAN" lettering in the X-Men logo style. The name nods to the meme.

This Is Fine shirts

KC Green drew the original in "On Fire," a 2013 strip of his webcomic Gunshow. A dog sits calmly in a burning room and says "this is fine." The first two panels reached Reddit and Imgur in September 2014, posted without credit, according to Wikipedia. Green's own strip page still carries "content © kc green." In 2026 Green published a book of Question Hound cartoons, This Is Fine: Life Lessons for a World on Fire, which Running Press lists with an on-sale date of 4 August 2026.

Barbadifuoco swaps the dog for a stuffed donkey in Stuffed Donkey Is Fine, who sits in the flames with a mug and says "This is fine." The same mood, without the dog, is kg07's Everything Is Fine: a toasted marshmallow on a stick, on fire, saying "I'm fine. It's fine. Everything is fine."

More meme shirts

Coddesigns swaps the cat for a ramen bowl in Nyan Ramen: a smiling pixel bowl with chopsticks, flying with a striped yellow and orange noodle trail where Nyan Cat has a rainbow. Christopher Torres posted the animation on 2 April 2011, and it won the first Webby Award for Meme of the Year in 2012.

The Drake format started with a music video, "Hotline Bling," released on 19 October 2015. Artist seamustheskunk runs it with Jack Skellington in Drake Skellington, who turns away from a Christmas tree and points at a pumpkin. Deal With IT by Made With Awesome puts pixel sunglasses on a grinning clown, with "Deal with IT" under the face. DannMatthews reworks "felt cute, might delete later" into "might delete Slater" in Felt Cute Might Delete AC, with the words around a line-art portrait. The most general design is domichan's Less People More Memes, where neon cat and dog meme icons ring the slogan, so it works for anyone who lives online.

Pick the meme your group chat still quotes, then pick the twist. Choose a crossover like Yelling Bat At Cat if the fandom is half the joke, or Stuffed Donkey Is Fine if the joke is your week. If the crossover is what makes you laugh, RIPT's pop culture mashup shirts hold more of them, and its funny graphic tees cover jokes with no meme attached.

Who owns a meme, and is this shirt official?

Some memes have clear owners, and some do not. These are documented cases from interviews, court summaries and government guidance. They are facts, not legal advice.

• This Is Fine: KC Green's strip page carries "content © kc green," and he has sold prints and shirts of it through his TopatoCo store. According to NPR's interview, merch and licensing deals let him draw for a living: Adult Swim paid him for cartoon bumpers, a Kickstarter-funded plush keeps selling out, and there is a "This is fine" Funko Pop.
• Distracted Boyfriend: Guillem told Money in 2017 that meme-related sales were "probably a 0.00000%" of his monthly revenue, and that the photo sells about 700 times a year against more than 5,000 a year for his top sellers. He said most meme uses are unlicensed, that his team would not act against good-faith use, and that it would act against uses that are pejorative, offensive or harmful.
• Grumpy Cat: in January 2018 a federal jury in California awarded Grumpy Cat Limited $710,001 in total against a sub-licensee of its licensed coffee maker and one individual defendant, on copyright, trademark and contract claims, according to a Loeb & Loeb summary. The summary says the sub-licensee also sold "Grumppuccino" T-shirts without authorization.
• Success Kid: in June 2024 the Eighth Circuit upheld a jury's rejection of a fair use defense after a congressional campaign committee used the photo in a fundraising post. The award was $750, the statutory minimum, per Loeb & Loeb.
• Smudge: the owners of the cat in Woman Yelling at a Cat sold a T-shirt and, according to Time, planned to donate the proceeds to the cat rescue Furry Tails.

The U.S. Copyright Office says courts decide fair use case by case, weigh four factors, and set no safe percentage. If you want a version made by a meme's creator, look for the creator's own shop. Every RIPT design page names the artist, so you always know whose art you are buying.

How long do meme shirts stay funny?

There is no agreed figure. One retailer study that used Google Trends put the average meme life at about two years, while one writer's small sample, in a 2018 Outline column, put it at about four months. Researchers call memes fads, and a study of 352 Reddit memes found that average lifespans have shrunk. Yet some formats have outlasted every one of those figures. Nyan Cat is from 2011, This Is Fine from 2013 and Distracted Boyfriend from 2017, and all three are still on shirt pages today.

• Pick a format, not a news item. A format that fits any joke outlives a joke about one week's headline.
• Look for a twist. A crossover gives the shirt two audiences. If the meme fades, the fandom joke is still there.
• Test it on next year's you. If the shirt still makes sense with no context, it will last.

Fabric, fit and print: what to check before you buy

Once you pick a size, each style on a RIPT design page shows its garment brand and fabric. The men's tee is a 4.5 oz ring-spun cotton tee, with some heather colors that include polyester. The premium tee is a 4.2 oz Bella+Canvas tee listed as 100% Airlume combed and ring-spun cotton. The size chart says the premium tees run small, so size up if you are between sizes. For more on cuts, see how to choose a graphic tee.

Printful's weight guide sorts tees into three bands. Multiply ounces by 33.91 to get grams per square meter (GSM).

By those bands, a 4.2 oz tee is lightweight and a 4.5 oz tee sits on the line between lightweight and midweight. Printful also says heavier is not automatically better: quality comes from matching the weight to the use, and lightweight to midweight fabrics (3.5 to 5.3 oz) suit direct-to-garment (DTG) printing.

• Print method. A Shopify guide explains that DTG prints water-based ink into the fabric, so the print feels soft and works best on cotton. Direct-to-film (DTF) heat-presses a film onto the shirt and is slightly more prone to cracking, especially in hot water. According to Shopify's shirt printing guide, screen printing uses one screen per color, and sublimation only works on polyester or poly-cotton blends and does best on light colors.
• Ring-spun cotton. It is spun into a finer, smoother thread than open-end yarn, and a printer's guide says it typically costs 10 to 30 percent more.
• Shrinkage. Pre-shrunk fabric still moves a little. Bella+Canvas claims a maximum of 5 percent for its pre-shrunk fabric, against up to 10 percent for cheaper brands. That is a manufacturer claim, not an independent test.
• Care. Printful's care guide says to wash a printed tee inside out at 30 C (86 F) or below on a delicate cycle with mild detergent, skip fabric softener, hang dry or tumble low, and avoid ironing directly on the print.

Meme t-shirt prices and sizes

• Men's tee: $22.95 to $28.95 depending on size. Men's sizes run S to 6XL on most designs. Felt Cute Might Delete AC stops at 3XL, with a top price of $25.95.
• Other styles: the premium men's tee is $24.95 to $28.95, the women's tee $22.95 to $25.95, tank tops $24.95 to $26.95 and crew neck sweatshirts $29.95 to $34.95. Each design page lists what it comes in.
• Youth tees and hoodies: seven of the 12 also come as a $17.95 youth tee and a zip-up hoodie at $41.95 to $46.95. The table at the top shows which.
• Shipping: almost all apparel orders ship within 5 to 7 business days, and delivery time comes on top of that. It can take longer if a vendor is delayed. Design pages list shipping from $5.49 and free shipping over $69. See shipping and returns.
• Returns: new, unworn and unwashed items within 30 days of delivery. RIPT does not pay return shipping. If RIPT made the mistake, such as the wrong size, the wrong color or a misprint, you do not need to send it back: email photos and RIPT reships it.

Frequently asked questions

What is a meme shirt?

A meme shirt, also called a meme tee or meme t-shirt, is a tee printed with a meme's image, catchphrase or format. Shops sort them into styles such as classic internet, pop culture and viral hits. The best ones add something new, such as a different character in a familiar format.

What is the best meme shirt?

The best meme shirt uses a format that fits any joke and adds a twist of its own. A crossover such as Yelling Bat At Cat works for fans of both the meme and the fandom, and a format like This Is Fine works for anyone having a bad week.

Where did the Woman Yelling at a Cat meme come from?

It joins a screenshot from a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills episode aired on 5 December 2011 with a 2018 Tumblr photo of Smudge, a cat from Ottawa. A Twitter user first paired them on 1 May 2019.

Where did the Drake "no" and "yes" meme come from?

The stills are from Drake's "Hotline Bling" video, released on 19 October 2015. The pose appeared on 4chan within weeks of the video and the format spread widely in early 2016, but no creator is credited and the first use of the two-panel layout is not separately dated.

Who owns the This Is Fine meme?

KC Green drew it in 2013 for his webcomic Gunshow, whose page carries "content © kc green." He has sold prints and shirts of it through his TopatoCo store.

Are meme shirts ever official?

Yes. Grumpy Cat T-shirts were licensed and sold at Hot Topic, according to Wikipedia, Smudge's owners sold a T-shirt, and Green has sold This Is Fine shirts himself. Many other meme shirts are original art in the spirit of the meme.

How long do memes last?

There is no agreed figure. A 2017 retailer study put the average at about two years, one writer's small sample at about four months, and researchers describe memes as fads. Formats that fit any joke, such as This Is Fine from 2013, have lasted more than a decade.

How should I wash a printed meme shirt?

Wash it inside out at 30 C (86 F) or below on a delicate cycle with mild detergent, skip fabric softener, and hang it to dry or tumble on low. Avoid ironing directly on the print.

How long does shipping take?

RIPT prints to order, and almost all apparel orders ship within 5 to 7 business days, plus delivery time.