The meme uses the NPC Wojak, a grey, expressionless cartoon face derived from the broader Wojak meme family, placed inside a circular badge. The badge reads "I Support The Current Thing" around its border, while the NPC character holds or is surrounded by symbols of various trending causes: the Ukrainian flag, LGBTQ+ pride flags, COVID vaccine symbols, mask icons, and other markers of social media activism1. The joke is that the NPC, a character designed to represent people who don't think for themselves, mindlessly cycles through whatever cause is dominating the news cycle4.

The format works as a visual argument. By cramming multiple cause symbols into a single badge worn by a blank-faced character, it suggests that support for any given movement is shallow, temporary, and driven by social pressure rather than genuine conviction3. The circular badge design mimics the profile picture overlays that platforms like Facebook and Twitter popularized for showing support for causes2.

The "Current Thing" meme landed at the intersection of several long-running internet debates about performative activism and online virtue signaling. As a concept, it built directly on the NPC meme that had gained mainstream attention during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, when The New York Times called the NPC Wojak a "collective mascot for the far-right commenters online"5. The "Current Thing" iteration updated the NPC critique for the social media era of profile-picture activism.

Writing for the Deseret News, one commentator argued that the meme only told half the story3. While Musk intended to call out progressive cause-hopping, the article pointed out that secular fervor driving people from cause to cause was just as present on the political right. The piece cited research showing that Donald Trump performed best among non-churchgoing voters during the 2016 primaries, winning "nearly two-thirds of people who don't go to church at all," suggesting that the impulse to latch onto movements filled a vacuum left by declining religious participation3.

The Deseret News analysis connected the meme to broader research on political polarization. A Pew report from the same period found that "among Democrats, 63% see Republicans as immoral, up from just 35% who said so in 2016," while "72% of Republicans see Democrats as immoral, up from 47% seven years ago"3. The "Current Thing" meme, in this reading, was less about any single cause and more about the way politics had replaced religion and community organizations as Americans' primary source of identity and belonging.

The phrase entered common usage in political commentary through 2022 and into 2023, used across podcasts, opinion columns, and social media discussions whenever a new cause dominated the news cycle. Critics of the meme argued it was a thought-terminating cliché that allowed people to dismiss legitimate activism by lumping all causes together as equally shallow3.