Facepalm meme
✓ Brand-safe. The facepalm gesture is widely recognized and generally considered humorous without any offensive connotations.
What does the Facepalm meme mean?
The facepalm meme represents a gesture of frustration or disappointment, often used to express exasperation over an obvious mistake or situation.
Where did Facepalm come from?
A facepalm is the physical gesture of placing one's hand across one's face, lowering one's face into one's hand or hands or covering or closing one's eyes. The gesture is often exaggerated by giving the motion more force and making a slapping noise when the hand comes in contact with the face.
Is the Facepalm meme dead?
Less than it was. Facepalm is fading: its rate of reads of its Wikipedia article has slowed by more than 15% compared with the period before. Its current rate is 2% of its peak, which came in the period ending Dec 1, 2015.
The Wikipedia article on Facepalm was read 84 times in November 2026, and 1,139,206 times since July 2015. Its busiest measured month ended Dec 1, 2015 at 595 reads per day.
Stats
| Busiest month | August 2015 (17,921 reads) |
| Reads, last 12 months | 32,581 |
| Reads, 12 months before | 47,475 |
| Change year on year | -31% |
| All-time reads since July 2015 | 1,139,206 |
| Current rate vs peak | 2% of the peak in the period ending Dec 1, 2015 |
Facepalm captions for businesses
| real estate | When your client thinks a good price is $50,000 below market / When the appraisal comes back lower than expected |
| dentists | When a patient says they only floss on holidays / When someone asks if sugar-free gum is really sugar-free |
| restaurants | When someone asks for ketchup on gourmet dishes / When the chef finds out the special was served cold |
| fitness studios | When you realize you've been doing squats wrong all along / When a member says they only exercise on the weekends |
| software startups | When the code you wrote yesterday doesn't compile today / When someone asks if we can just 'make it go viral' |
| coffee shops | When a customer orders a 'regular coffee' but can't define it / When someone asks for a non-caffeinated espresso |
| hair salons | When a client shows you a haircut from a different era / When they say they want 'just a trim' but point to a photo of a bob |
| accountants | When a client says they don't need to keep receipts / When someone asks why taxes are due on April 15th every year |
More questions
Can a business post the Facepalm meme?
Usually, yes. The facepalm gesture is widely recognized and generally considered humorous without any offensive connotations. memeidea's brand-safety calls are AI-assisted suggestions, so check how the format is being used this week before posting.
What is a good Facepalm caption for a business?
For real estate: “When your client thinks a good price is $50,000 below market / When the appraisal comes back lower than expected”. For dentists: “When a patient says they only floss on holidays / When someone asks if sugar-free gum is really sugar-free”. For restaurants: “When someone asks for ketchup on gourmet dishes / When the chef finds out the special was served cold”. More captions are in the table above.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Facepalm: article and page-view counts (Wikimedia API)
- Know Your Meme: origin and spread
- memeidea method: how stages and momentum are measured
