A FAMILIAR MEME. A NEW CONTEXT.

23 Personalities (Split)

What this meme means

A meme from M. Night Shyamalan's Split (2016), in which James McAvoy's Kevin Crumb has twenty-three personalities. A shot of McAvoy looking warily over his shoulder in a car marks jokes about inner contradictions.

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The film and its character

The film Split came out in early 2017 and quickly became one of the most talked-about thrillers of that season. The lead role was played by Scottish actor James McAvoy, who portrayed Kevin Crumb, a man with dissociative identity disorder housing twenty-three different personalities. The personalities differ in manner of speech, age, behavior, and even handwriting, and the actor switched between them within a single scene, which became the film's greatest strength. It was precisely this idea of several "selves" in one body that gave rise to the memes.

Shyamalan later continued the story in the film Glass (2019), tying it to the earlier Unbreakable (2000). The question of whether a twenty-fourth personality, known as "the Beast," exists remained one of the most discussed points of the film and also fueled jokes online. The image of a character who constantly changes while remaining one person proved very convenient for summing up in a single phrase.

Origin of the meme

The exact date the first picture of McAvoy that became the template appeared, and its author, could not be established: there are no unambiguous sources on the first publication. It is known that the meme took shape on the Russian-language internet in 2017, right after the film's release, and its name reflects the main idea, that is, "23 personalities." The frame, in which the actor sits in a car and turns around with a tense, slightly distrustful expression, proved convenient for captions because it looks, on its own, like a moment of reflection.

The format largely draws on the earlier "Girl I Like" template, in which a single picture is captioned with different states of the same person. Users replaced the usual character with the film's hero, emphasizing that a multitude of contradictory desires coexist within one person. In this way, a film reference turned into a universal metaphor.

How the meme is used

The meme is most often used to describe inner uncertainty: when a person can't decide what to have for dinner, whether they want to work or rest, or is going through a mood swing within a single evening. The caption usually lists several opposing "selves," and the picture of McAvoy serves as vivid confirmation of this instability. The joke is understandable even to those who haven't seen the film.

There are other variations too: some replace "personalities" with musical tastes, TV shows, or favorite films, others use the meme to poke fun at their own inconsistency in a conversation or at work. For viewers who have seen Split, the joke lands even funnier, since they recognize plot details and references to the final scenes.

Cultural context

The film brought the topic of dissociative identity disorder into mass awareness, and disputes arose among viewers and specialists over how accurately the film portrays the condition. Many critics noted that the film oversimplifies the real diagnosis, yet the image of the many-faced character firmly entered the cultural vocabulary. The meme borrows precisely the image, not the medical side of the matter, which is why it remains light and harmless.

For McAvoy himself, the meme became part of his recognizability: his face in glasses, looking back over his shoulder, often appears online independently of the film. This is a typical fate for actor stills, which outlive a specific project and go on to live as independent templates, familiar even to those who have never watched the film.