First Time Meme Template
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First Time Meme Template Origin
The “First time?” meme originates from the 2018 Western anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.In one scene, two men are standing on a gallows awaiting execution: one man is visibly terrified and emotionally overwhelmed, while the other appears calm, resigned, and almost sympathetic.
The calmer man turns his head and asks, “First time?”, a line that sharply highlights the contrast between someone experiencing extreme fear for the first time and someone who has already endured similar situations before.
This brief moment, combining dark humor with grim circumstances, was later captured in a two-panel screenshot and began circulating online, where it quickly evolved into a widely recognized reaction meme.
First Time Meme Template Description
The meme visually and emotionally centers on contrast.One character represents a newcomer facing pain, failure, or stress with raw fear and panic, while the other symbolizes experience, desensitization, and emotional exhaustion.
The phrase “First time?” is not genuinely inquisitive but ironic, implying that repeated exposure to hardship eventually strips away emotional response.
As a result, the meme conveys black humor, cynicism, and weary acceptance, often suggesting that what feels catastrophic to one person has become routine to another who has “been through it before.”
Example First Time Meme Usage
The “First time?” meme is typically used as a reaction image to express ironic sympathy or dark humor when someone encounters a difficult or frustrating experience for the first time. It emphasizes the gap between inexperience and hard-earned resilience, often suggesting that such problems are recurring and unavoidable.
- A junior employee panicking over their first negative performance review while senior colleagues remain calm
- A new programmer experiencing their first production outage, critical bug, or late-night on-call incident
- A first-time startup founder reacting emotionally to funding rejection or a failed product launch
- A new content creator facing their first algorithm penalty, shadowban, or sudden drop in engagement
- A student distressed by their first major exam failure compared to classmates who have failed before
- A gamer frustrated by repeated losses in a high-difficulty level or ranked competitive match
- A beginner investor shocked by their first major market crash or portfolio drawdown
