About

"Fight Me IRL", often intentionally misspelled as "Fite Me IRL", is a phrase used as a response to threatening responses or to express disagreement with someone else's opinions. The term is also used ironically to parody Internet Tough Guy stereotype, similar colloquially to Come At Me Bro. It is often paired with Do you even lift? in image macros and otherwise.

Origin

"Fight me" was originally defined in 2009 on Urban Dictionary^[1] as an "all-purpose statement" used when you want to fight someone. While the exact earliest use of the full phrase online is unknown, the earliest known instance of it being used on 4chan was in this post on the /sci/ board on August 13th, 2011.

In early 2012, “Would you fight me IRL” became popular through multiple posts on Bodybuilding.com where users asked other posters if they would actually fight them, the first of which was posted on January 1st, 2012, and the second of which was posted April 11th, 2012. The earlier, more popular post received 108 replies as of 2013.^[5][6]

Urban dictionary defined "Fight me IRL" on December 25th, 2012. The phrase is used extensively in online gaming arguments, many of which are posted on YouTube. (See notable examples below).

Spread

There are currently at least 7,000 instances of the term being used as a response in a 4chan board since 2011.^[3][4] Popular in image macros, the phrase returns thousands of results on Tumblr. The domain name fite.me was registered on April 21st, 2014, and redirects visitors directly to a page that called /IRL.

On February 7th 2013, the phrase was used in a reddit post title after a user claimed an online gaming opponent private messaged a photograph with the phrase as the message's subject. That post received 1,919 points (93% upvoted) and 703 comments as of May 2015.^[8]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References