Cheems

Cheems is the anxious, round-faced Shiba Inu who speaks by dropping extra m’s into words: hamburger becomes “hammburmger,” and cheeseburger becomes the signature “cheemsburbger.” The dog was Balltze, also called Ball Ball by his family, a rescue adopted by Kathy in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

The source photo came first. On September 4, 2017, Kathy posted a set of Balltze sitting on a marble step to the @balltze Instagram account. His squint, tucked posture, and almost embarrassed smile made the image unusually easy to read as shy, guilty, or quietly overwhelmed.

The meme character arrived later. The earliest well-supported Cheems use appeared in Reddit’s r/dogelore on June 8, 2019, in a four-panel story built around the word “Cheemsburbger.” That date is the first supported meme use; 2017 is the date of the underlying photograph, not the birth of the character.

Dogelore users turned the single joke into a personality. Cheems was timid, hungry, unlucky, and sometimes absurdly violent about burgers. The deliberate m-heavy spelling worked like a voice: readers could recognize the character even when the picture changed.

That voice made the character recognizable even when artists changed the pose, costume, or setting.

By late 2019, Cheems had escaped the original cheeseburger gag. Artists redrew him as historical figures, anime characters, warriors, and other pop-culture roles, while keeping the same hesitant face and speech pattern. That flexibility let him function as both a character in longer Dogelore stories and a quick reaction image.

The biggest expansion came in May 2020 with Swole Doge vs. Cheems. A muscular Doge represented an idealized past; a small, defeated Cheems represented the supposedly softer present. The format became a compact machine for generational comparisons during the first pandemic year and carried Cheems far beyond Reddit.

A second 2020 branch supplied another lasting verb: “bonk.” In the best-known version, a bat-wielding Cheems sends an overly horny poster to “horny jail.” The image became a reusable moderation joke, while bat-carrying Cheems was soon inserted into other three-way comparisons and brand posts.

Cheems also developed unusually strong Spanish-language lives. Variants such as “me da amsiedad” preserved the added-m voice in translation, and Balltze’s owner said one of her favorite memes was the Spanish bath image asking viewers to keep scrolling. In 2021 the character even appeared in protest signs and online graphics around Myanmar’s anti-coup movement, showing how far a dog reaction had moved from its subreddit origin.

Kathy eventually worked with licensing and toy partners while using merchandise to support dog charities. She consistently distinguished the fictional Cheems from Balltze, the real pet behind the cutout. That distinction mattered again when Balltze developed serious health problems after recovering from pancreatitis in 2022.

Balltze died on August 18, 2023, during a thoracentesis procedure while being treated for cancer. His family asked people to remember the joy he brought rather than dwell only on the loss. Tributes reused the same face that had communicated embarrassment and anxiety, but now as an affectionate memorial—proof that Cheems had become both a flexible meme character and a shared memory of Balltze himself.

Cheems has a readable face, a written voice, and a built-in contrast with the more confident Doge. That combination works in a single reaction, a two-panel comparison, or a full comic without requiring much setup.

Use Cheems to express awkwardness, low confidence, mild defeat, anxious self-awareness, or deliberately childish pronunciation. Bat Cheems adds a playful reprimand; Swole Doge vs. Cheems compares an idealized past with a disappointing present.