The founder of @cursed.image5 revealed to Bored Panda what the inspiration behind the entire project was in the first place. It all happened a few years ago, while they were still at school.

"I created my page back in 2019 while I was in Sixth Form. There was a contest at school to see who could create and grow the largest page within the space of a school term," they opened up to us.

"The idea of running a cursed image page was one of a complete coincidence that happened after a friend of mine introduced me to them," they said.

However, a couple of months after creating the page, the founder found themselves under lockdown, along with the rest of the world. "With nothing to do, I found myself obsessed with growing the community of the page. I saw it as a way to bring a smile or laugh to people around the world."

Bored Panda was interested in what counts as a 'cursed' image and where the line is between that and a regular old meme.

"Cursed images need to talk for themselves," the founder and curator of @cursed.image5 said.

"You don’t need context to get the joke, it’s an image where the longer you look, the worse they get. Most importantly, there must be some chaos, something that makes people's skin crawl like putting milk in tea before the water."

According to the founder, people enjoy "how wacky and wild" cursed images can be. They quoted that cursed memes are like what Forrest Gump said in his titular movie: "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

We’re actually pretty big fans of both cursed and blessed memes. We think that a healthy balance of chaotic bizarreness and lawful wholesomeness is essential to a healthy and nutritious digital diet. You can’t live on cuteness and smiles all the time.

Sometimes, you need a huge dose of ‘what in the seven hells is going on here?!’ to remind you that life is a rollercoaster—and we have no idea what’s coming next.

At the time of writing, the ‘Cursed Images’ Instagram page had 229k followers. The founder of the page posts peculiar and contextless memes every single day and has been keeping this habit up for a long while now. You’d think that we would have ‘seen it all’ over so many years spent on social media, but many of these memes still manage to surprise us.

Cursed images have been a part of internet culture and social media for quite a while now. Officially, cursed images got their name in late 2015, on Tumblr, after an account called (somewhat unsurprisingly) CursedImages started sharing weird and unusual pics. From there, this style of memes spread elsewhere on the internet, including Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, and elsewhere.

As a whole, cursed images can vary quite a bit in their content. Some memes might be disturbing, others might simply be low-quality photographs or snapshots of reality that looks glitched and makes the viewer uncomfortable. Others, still focus on illogical, mind-breaking topics or silly weirdness and chaotic fun.

The opposite of cursed content is blessed, while a mix of the two is known as ‘blursed’ (blessed + cursed). Blessed images are usually super positive, cute, and wholesome. Though they can be fun(ny) just like cursed ones, these memes usually don’t do anything that would take the audience outside of its comfort zone.

The memes that see the most success on the internet have to resonate with the audience on some level. In general, the more relatable that a pic or a joke is, the more likely it is to go viral because internet users will enjoy them and start sharing them with all of their pals.

Another important aspect of a quality meme is that it is short and to the point. Captions can help set the tone and introduce the audience to the context of what’s going on. However, they can also limit how folks interpret the photo. When you’re showing your followers pics without all that other fancy stuff like words and explanations, the meme is at its purest and rawest. If it’s weird enough, it’s bound to start a discussion as everyone tries to figure out what’s going on.

However, relatability and a short format aren’t enough for online content to be successful. Something else you need to consider is how you’re setting your page, as well as your memes apart from the crowd. You could try honing in on a niche that your competitors have ignored. Or you could add a dash of unique humor to elevate your cursed images and make them even more C u R s E d.

The last thing you need is… luck! No matter how great a meme is, it might not get the eyeballs you want due to a whole host of random reasons. Maybe the timing was off or literally everyone around the globe was awwwing over blessed animal pics. Though online success isn’t something that you can fully control, it’s best not to worry too much about clicks and views: focus on connecting with the audience and creating and sharing content that is high quality, on a consistent basis.

Which cursed images did you enjoy the most, dear Pandas? Were there any that confused you so much that you ended up saying, ‘Wait, what?’ aloud? Drop by the comments to share your thoughts. If you’d like to see some more cursed memes, check out Bored Panda’s earlier article about @cursed.image5 right here. Oh, and if you’d like to balance things out a bit, take a peek at our earlier feature about blessed images over here to heal your soul.