Chill Guy
meme artwork from 2024
Chill Guy, also known as My new character, is a digital artwork and Internet meme first posted by the American artist Phillip Banks on Twitter on October 4, 2023. The artwork consists of an anthropomorphic dog wearing a grey sweater, blue jeans, and red sneakers, giving off a chill expression by smirking with his hands in his pockets. While the artwork had some success after publishing, it only became viral about a year later on August 30, 2024, when a user on TikTok made a slideshow with the artwork, combining it with other popular memes at the time. In the following days, similar memes gained tens of millions of views, attracting the attention of larger corporations, including the German athletic apparel company Adidas, the food delivery service Uber Eats, and the Indian political party BJP, who used the artwork in their promotions.
The artwork became viral a second time on November 21, 2024, primarily on TikTok, inspiring the meme coin $CHILLGUY which rapidly rose to a market cap of US$580 million, driven in part by a post by Salvadorian president Nayib Bukele on Twitter in support of the coin. The resulting popularity of the coin and other unauthorized use of the artwork for commercial gain led Banks to copyright the artwork and issue notice and take downs of "unauthorized merchandise and shitcoins" trying to make a profit, not including fanart or brands using it in the trends. Following the announcement, the coin dropped to about half of what it was worth, and Banks was subsequently doxed, prompting him to set his Twitter account to private to avoid further harassment.
According to some media outlets, the meme likely resonated online as it was regarded as a playful but relatable piece which encourages people to seek self-help, remain stress-free, and approach life with an easygoing attitude. The artwork was regarded as one of the top memes of 2024 by the American newspaper USA Today and the Indian digital media company ScoopWhoop.
Description
The artwork was created by the North Carolinian artist Phillip Banks, which according to Banks' Tumblr account, is a pseudonym.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Chill Guy” is meme artwork from 2024. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Chill, meme and artwork, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “meme artwork from 2024” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q130857912. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2023 and 2024.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Chill Guy”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Chill Guy primary sources, Chill Guy archive and Chill research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Chill Guy”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Chill Guy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.