The Peter Parker Reading Book & Crying meme originates from the 2002 film Spider-Man, starring Tobey Maguire. The scene features Peter Parker in his bedroom, overwhelmed with emotion while looking through a book. Internet culture repurposed this dramatic moment to represent the feeling of reading something deeply moving, tragic, or painfully relatable. It gained widespread popularity on platforms like Twitter and Reddit as a way to react to sad plot twists in books, emotional lyrics, or heartbreaking fan-fiction.