You’ve seen it. It’s a comic with two round, gray, vaguely blob-like characters. One hands the other a small green cube and says, "I made this." The second character looks at the cube alone in the next frame. By the final panel, the second character turns back and says, "I made this." It is the "You made this I made this" comic, and it’s basically the unified theory of how the internet works.
Funny, right? It’s also incredibly cynical. Meanwhile, you can read other developments here: The Media Anatomy of Celebrity Health Revelations: Quantifying the Clarkson Disclosure Function.
Where "You Made This I Made This" Actually Came From
The internet has a short memory, so people often forget that this wasn't some corporate marketing stunt or a random AI-generated image. It was drawn by Anthony Clark, the creator of the webcomic Nedroid. He posted it back in 2013. Think about that for a second. In internet years, 2013 is practically the Bronze Age. We were still arguing about the Harlem Shake and Vine was still a thing.
Clark’s original comic didn't have a name. It was just a commentary on the nature of digital "sharing," which is often just a polite word for plagiarism. It blew up because it articulated a feeling everyone on Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter—now X—was experiencing daily. You spend three hours making a clever graphic or writing a joke, you post it, and ten minutes later, a "parody" account with a million followers posts it without a tag. To see the full picture, check out the recent analysis by E! News.
They made it.
The genius of the comic is in its simplicity. There are no backgrounds. There is no complex dialogue. It’s just the cube. That green cube represents everything from a high-effort video essay to a low-effort "it's Wednesday my dudes" post.
Why the Meme Refuses to Die
Most memes have a shelf life of about two weeks before they become "cringe." But "You made this I made this" is different. It’s what we call an evergreen meme. Why? Because the problem it describes hasn't gone away; it’s actually gotten significantly worse with the rise of AI and large-scale content scraping.
When Anthony Clark drew those four panels, he was thinking about individual users stealing art. He probably wasn't thinking about multi-billion dollar corporations training LLMs on millions of copyrighted images and then claiming the output as "new." But the comic fits perfectly. It’s the ultimate visual shorthand for the lack of attribution in the digital age.
It's also relatable on a personal level. Have you ever said something smart in a meeting, only for a colleague to repeat it louder 30 seconds later and get all the credit? That’s the meme. It’s a universal human experience wrapped in a gray blob.
The Irony of the Meme's Success
There is a delicious, meta-layer of irony here. The "You made this I made this" comic is one of the most stolen pieces of intellectual property in history. People have cropped out Anthony Clark’s signature. They’ve redrawn it. They’ve translated it into fifty languages.
Basically, they did to the comic exactly what the comic was complaining about.
Honestly, it’s kind of beautiful in a tragic way. Clark has spoken about this before, noting that while it’s his most famous work, it’s also the one that brings him the least direct benefit because it’s been detached from his name. It belongs to the "internet" now, which is just a fancy way of saying everyone is taking credit for it.
The Evolution of Attribution
The meme has evolved. We aren't just talking about 9GAG stealing from Reddit anymore. We're looking at a fundamental shift in how we value "making."
- The Remix Culture: In the mid-2010s, we called it "remixing." If you changed a few pixels or added a caption, you felt like you’d added value.
- The Influencer Era: Content aggregators became the new celebrities. Accounts like FuckJerry or TheFatJewish built empires by essentially being the second guy in the comic.
- The AI Wave: Now, we have machines doing the "I made this" at a scale humans can't even comprehend.
The comic is a warning. When we stop caring who actually made the thing, we lose the incentive for people to make things in the first place. If the first guy never makes the green cube, the second guy has nothing to hold.
How to Not Be the "I Made This" Guy
So, how do you navigate the internet without being a jerk? It’s not actually that hard.
First, give credit. If you find a cool image or a great quote, spend thirty seconds trying to find the source. Reverse image search is your friend. If you can't find the source, at least acknowledge that you didn't make it. "Found this on Discord, let me know if you know the artist" goes a long way.
Second, understand the difference between inspiration and imitation. It’s okay to be inspired by someone's style. It’s not okay to trace their work and put your watermark on it.
Third, support creators directly. If you love a webcomic or a writer, follow their official channels. Don't just consume their work through a third-party aggregator that’s stripping away their revenue and their identity.
Actionable Steps for Creators and Consumers
If you are a creator worried about your work being "I made this-ed," you have to be proactive.
Watermark intelligently. Don't put a giant, ugly logo in the middle, but place your handle or URL in a spot that’s difficult to crop out without ruining the composition. Anthony Clark’s mistake—if you can even call it that—was keeping the signature small and at the very bottom.
Register your work. For significant projects, copyright registration is still the only real legal teeth you have. For memes? You’re mostly out of luck, but establishing a "paper trail" on platforms like Instagram or a personal portfolio site helps.
Call it out, but pick your battles. If a major brand steals your work, go for the throat (legally and via social pressure). If it’s a random kid with 12 followers, it’s probably not worth the blood pressure spike.
For the rest of us, the consumers, our job is simple: be the person who asks "Who made this?" in the comments. Be the friction that stops the seamless theft. If we want a world where people keep making cool green cubes, we have to make sure the makers get the credit.
The "You made this I made this" cycle only stops when we decide that attribution matters more than a quick laugh. It's a choice we make every time we hit the share button.
