Distracted Boyfriend Screensaver_
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Scenes
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Guide — the object-labeling meme, with labels that never stop swapping
An original cartoon of the three-person scene, eight label sets that rotate on their own, floating hearts and a furious glare. Four scenes, nothing to install.Choose Street, Sunset, VHS or Night, or press 1 to 4. Only the backdrop changes; the three figures stay put.
Drag Swap speed from 1 to 10: the labels change every 4.2 seconds at the slowest setting, every 2.9 seconds by default and every 1.3 seconds at the fastest.
Press Swap labels or N to jump to the next of the eight label sets straight away.
Toggle the Object labels (or press L), the Hearts & glare and the Scanlines.
Press Enter Fullscreen, click the scene or press F. Move the mouse for the Exit Fullscreen and Pause buttons; Space pauses, R resets, Esc leaves.
Scenes and shortcuts
- 1 Street
- Blue daytime sky over a grey sidewalk
- 2 Sunset
- Purple-to-orange sky, dark skyline
- 3 VHS
- Sepia tint with flickering specks
- 4 Night
- Navy sky and lit windows in the buildings
- F
- Fullscreen on/off
- Space
- Pause / resume
- N
- Next label set now
- L
- Labels on/off
- 1–4
- Switch scene
- R
- Reset to defaults
- Esc
- Leave fullscreen
- TV / monitor
- Open the page, press F, leave it running
- screen sleep
- The page does not keep the display awake: set your sleep timer to Never while it runs
- pause
- Freezes the labels, the glare and the boyfriend’s sway; the hearts keep floating
The Distracted Boyfriend meme, explained
What is the Distracted Boyfriend meme?
The Distracted Boyfriend meme is based on a stock photo by Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem: a man walking with his girlfriend turns to look at a passing woman while his girlfriend stares at him in disbelief. The photo took off as a meme in 2017 and became the definitive object-labeling template, with a text label on each of the three people. This screensaver recreates the scene with original cartoon characters.
Is this the original stock photo?
No. The original is a copyrighted photograph. The three figures here are original cartoon characters drawn with JavaScript on an HTML5 canvas for this page, not the photo and not anyone’s likeness. They only recreate the composition, so the object-labeling joke still works.
What do the labels do?
Just like the template, one label sits above the girlfriend on the left, one above the boyfriend in the middle and one above the passer-by on the right. The page cycles through eight label sets, such as sleep / me / one more episode, stable version / developers / shiny new framework and this screensaver / you / all the other screensavers, each fading in when it appears. Swap speed sets how long each set stays, and N skips to the next one.
How do I run it fullscreen?
Click the scene, press Enter Fullscreen or press F. Move the mouse to show the Exit Fullscreen and Pause buttons, which hide again after 2.5 seconds, or press Esc to leave. Where a browser blocks the fullscreen API, the scene fills the browser window instead. The page does not keep the display awake, so set your screen’s sleep timer to Never if it should keep running.