A meme for when you understand you’re working out of time.

An illustration often called the “White rabbit pointing at a clock” meme has just lately taken off on social media as a response picture about being punctual. Naturally, the web took that urgency and twisted it into one thing downright foolish.

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What is the “white rabbit pointing at a clock” meme?

At its core, the meme captures a smugness round time and probably lacking one thing necessary. The Alice in Wonderland-styled white rabbit, wearing a blue coat and holding up a pocket watch, seems to scold the viewer for being late. Because of that, the meme naturally suits conditions the place somebody is working out of time, or no less than thinks they’re.

People have connected captions that exaggerate the rabbit’s message. For instance, some labeled it with strains like, “Me when my friend says they’ll be ready in five minutes.” As a end result, the meme has turn into shorthand for impatience or looming deadlines. Over time, creators have used it extra creatively, giving it ironic or absurd twists.

Origins of the “white rabbit pointing at a clock” meme

The meme appears to be like like one thing an AI software may have made, and a few folks appeared to share AI-generated variations of the meme artwork. However, it really got here from a chunk of digital artwork that was greater than a decade previous.

Artist Luz Tapia (@luztapiaart) first painted the picture in March 2012. According to the artist, the Photoshop file itself is timestamped from that interval, and her seen signature on the art work helps the identical date. She initially uploaded it to her DeviantArt web page earlier than later eradicating it.

Just a few years later, the picture resurfaced on Pinterest with out crediting the unique artist, earlier than it grew in recognition as a meme in May 2025.

Tapia confirmed she painted it digitally lengthy earlier than the current wave of AI artwork instruments existed. She even posted the unique model, full with movies of her going by way of all of its layers, as proof.

“Also, I still have the original PSD and here you’ll see me hiding the base layers below the textures and after that, the texture layers. When I hide the eye you can see the sketch below!” she wrote, including in a follow-up tweet, “And even more proof, behold the original file and folder with the dates!! Also here I go hiding layer by layer until the very first sketch. The clock looking like that was me just being lazy and scribbling to give the illusion of detail because this took me AGES.”

The art work is predicated on an official piece from the 2010 Alice in Wonderland film. While it appears to be like similar to the official art work, it was totally sketched and painted by Tapia herself.

She talked concerning the origins of the piece, saying, “There’s no meaning to this sorry! I was practicing using this image as reference. I never claimed I ‘own the character’ but the viral image is my art.”

TikTok revived the picture and turned it right into a meme

The picture stayed largely dormant till TikTokers rediscovered it in May 2025. @boxed3k posted one of many earliest meme variations, probably even the unique one, on May 14. Their textual content overlay learn, “How teachers be posted up when you start packing 1 minute before class ends.” They paired it with the audio clip “So Fun” by Seven Harris.

From there, the meme snowballed, spreading over to different social media platforms. Others reused the identical sound and picture to create related jokes. The memes targeted on literal time-based humor. Some examples embody folks being late, counting down minutes, or ready impatiently for one thing to occur.

Examples of the white rabbit pointing at a clock meme

@OvOBrezzzy tweeted, “When the side character randomly starts getting to much screen time.”

The Daily Dot has reached out to @luztapiaart for remark through X.

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