James Van Der Beek Worked 6 Years on Dawson's Creek — The Internet Reduced It to 3 Seconds

James Van Der Beek spent six years of his life pouring everything into Dawson's Creek. He filmed 128 episodes. Over 120 hours of television. He was the face of a show that defined a generation of teen drama.

And then the internet took a single three-second clip of him crying and turned it into one of the most enduring memes in history.

The scene came from the Season 3 finale, "True Love," which aired on May 24, 2000. In it, Dawson tells his longtime love Joey to go be with their friend Pacey. Then he breaks down — mouth open, eyes scrunched, tears streaming in what can only be described as the most dramatically ugly cry ever captured on camera.

For years, the clip floated around the internet. Then in 2006, someone uploaded a video called "Dawson's Crying Face" to YouTube, and the screenshot went nuclear. Stripped of all context, the image became a universal reaction GIF — deployed millions of times to express everything from mild disappointment to existential despair.

He Leaned Into It

Most actors would be mortified. Van Der Beek found it hilarious.

In January 2011, he partnered with Funny or Die to launch jamesvandermemes.com, a website entirely dedicated to memes of himself. He didn't just tolerate the joke — he became the joke's biggest fan.

"It's hilarious to me that you can work for six years on a show, 120-something hours, and it gets boiled down to three seconds," he said in an interview.

He went on to play a wildly exaggerated version of himself in the sitcom Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, leaning hard into his status as a self-aware former teen idol. It was a performance that proved he understood something most celebrities never figure out: the best way to outlast a meme is to join it.

A Legacy Beyond the Meme

Van Der Beek passed away on February 11, 2026, at age 48, after a battle with colorectal cancer. He left behind his wife Kimberly and six children.

In the outpouring of tributes that followed, one thing became clear: nobody actually reduced him to three seconds. The meme was just the door. Behind it was an actor who never took himself too seriously, who understood that being part of the culture — even as a punchline — was better than being forgotten.

Six years of work. Three seconds of fame. And a lifetime of being in on the joke.