The Gangster SpongeBob meme features various fan-made illustrations of SpongeBob SquarePants and his friends dressed in early 2000s urban streetwear, often including oversized hoodies, gold chains, and baggy jeans. These images originally circulated on social media platforms like MySpace and early Facebook as unironic 'cool' avatars before evolving into a satirical meme format. Today, the imagery is used to represent a humorous juxtaposition between SpongeBob's innocent personality and a 'thug life' persona. It is frequently applied to situations where someone feels overly confident after a minor achievement or when acting tough in an absurdly non-threatening context.