I Accidentally

About

“I Accidentally…” is a catchphrase, internet slang, and trolling mechanism meant to exploit the imagination of English-speaking internet users. It is used by constructing a complete sentence that begins with “I accidentally” and removing the verb, leaving readers wondering what had been there in the first place.

Origin

The first instance of this was a possible typo that appeared in a post on 4chan‘s /b/ (random) board on May 20th, 2008. The original poster stated that they had just “accidentally 93MB of .rar files” and wanted to know what they should do and if it was dangerous. Other posters responded both with comments on the post’s lack of grammar as well as variations on the phrase “I accidentally.” Although the original thread was not archived, a screenshot of the post has been floating around the web since.

Spread

Following the 4chan post, the phrase I Accidentally was used as a textual trolling mechanism across other image boards, message boards including the BodyBuilding forums^[5], Yahoo! Ansswers^[3][4], and chat services like Omegle^[2]. Users on the receiving end of the trolling would be dumbfounded as to the incomplete sentences or desperately contemplating what accident has occurred. Two popular variations are “I accidentally the whole Coke bottle”^[7][1] and “I accidentally a fleshlight”. In April 2011, Fark^[6] used the phrase as a Photoshop contest theme.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

“I accidentally” is a rather common phrase but when we compare to one specific iteration of the catchphrase do we begin to see the correlation.

External References

^[1] ExtremeSkins – I had a coke bottle and I accidentally the whole thing.

^[2] Memebase – Category Tag – Omegle

^[3] Yahoo! Answers – I accidentally the whole thing?

^[4] Yahoo! Answers – Hey yahoo I need your help

^[5] BodyBuilding.com – I accidentally used the “I accidentally the whole thing” (srs)

^[6] Fark – Photoshop theme: I accidentally the whole thing

^[7] Everything Shii Knows – I Accidentally the Whole Thing