The Xiao Ling meme, featuring a young boy with a distinct and wide-eyed grin, gained massive popularity within the shitposting and 'brain rot' subcultures of the internet. Often appearing in low-quality videos or heavily filtered images, the character became a symbol of chaotic, nonsensical humor. While the original footage captures a simple moment of a child smiling, the internet transformed it into a recurring motif in surreal edits, frequently accompanied by high-pitched music or glitch effects. Today, it is primarily used to represent a state of mindless joy or to react to increasingly absurd online content.