Ice Age Baby refers to a human baby character named Roshan from the 2002 animated film Ice Age. Following a viral tweet posted in January 2020, memes in which people expressed hate for the character, or a desire to hurt or murder him, gained popularity online.
Origin[]
On March 15th, 2002, animated film Ice Age premiered. In the film, the main group of characters come across a lost human baby separated from his family and take it upon themselves to reunite him with his father (scene from the film shown below).
While memes featuring the baby, particularly of comparison format and shitposts, were posted online before (example shown below, left and center), the character did not receive a viral spread in memes prior to January 2020. On January 1st, 2020, Twitter user @Kein68Mistker tweeted "RT if you'd beat the shit out of the baby from Ice Age," with the tweet accumulating over 71,400 retweets and 159,200 likes in one month (shown below, right).
Spread[]
Starting in January 2020, a number of accounts stating a strong dislike for the Ice Age Baby were created online on Twitter and Facebook. For example, on January 5th, Twitter account @fuckthaticeage1 was created. On January 7th, Facebook[6] page I hate the baby from Ice Age was created, accumulating over 52,500 followers in one month, and over 115,000 followers in seven weeks.
On January 7th, 2020, Redditor cheekygosling posted a Cringe Ass Nae Nae Baby meme in /r/okbuddyretard subreddit which received over 19,400 upvotes in one month .
Starting on January 7th, multiple viral memes based on the idea of the character being hated were posted in /r/okbuddyretard and on the Facebook page I hate the baby from Ice Age, with the group being the major driving factor behind the spread of the meme. For example, a January 7th, 2020, meme posted by the group received over 1,100 reactions and 1,700 shares (shown below, left). A January 9th, 2020, meme by Redditor MeBigAutism received over 2,700 upvotes in one month, with the same-day repost in the Facebook group gaining over 1,400 reactions and 1,700 shares (shown below, left and right).