Bingus

About

Bingus is a hairless Sphynx cat that originated from a video in which he is pet while staring at his owner. Attracting attention on Instagram in March 2020, Bingus’ popularity exploded in September after he appeared in a viral Reddit post, which later resulted in online users referring to all Sphynxes as "Bingus."

Origin

At an unknown point, a video surfaced of a person stretching and scrunching the skin of a male Sphynx cat. On November 7th, 2020, Redditor Odd-Ad-8224 claimed to have found the identity of the cat in the /r/Bingus.^[11] They wrote:

I found a still from the original(unless it was reposted from another account) video from Douyin ( 抖音 )! The username is Lelemaoshe!! Sorry it's very likely you can't find Bingus's owner on instagram or twitter because they are (seemingly) from China. I would try Weibo or BilliBilli and see what you come up with! Although, I couldn't find anything but again I don't speak Chinese.

I don't have TikTok so I'm not sure if you can access Douyins there as well? Maybe y'all can try!! Douyin is the same as TikTok, just in China (they have the same company!)

The earliest found instance of the video comes from an Instagram^[1] post by user subarusocks on March 22nd (shown below). The video gained over 1,600 views in seven months. The next day, Instagram^[2] user big_chungles reposted the video and received more than 27,000 views in the same period. The cat was dubbed "Bingus" as early as June 9th, with multiple comments on big_chungles’ post reading "hi bingus."^[3]

Spread

Bingus’ popularity skyrocketed after September 8th, 2020, when Redditor haydongers posted an image of Bingus with the title "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. hi bingus…" to the subreddit /r/ambien^[4] (shown below). The post accumulated over 2,800 upvotes, 112 comments and numerous Reddit awards in a month, and screenshots of the post went viral elsewhere online shortly after.^[5][6]

On September 18th, Twitter^[7] user kurog3c tweeted a series of images under the caption "the four horsemen of the meowpocalypse," which also included a photo of Big Floppa. The tweet (seen below) received over 1,300 likes and 484 retweets in less than one month. A September 30th repost of the original Bingus video with the title "ahhhhh hi bingus" on the subreddit /r/aww^[8] gained over 17,500 upvotes, 318 comments and several Reddit awards in 22 days.

After haydongers’ post, many GIFs and GIF captions mentioning and showing Bingus were uploaded to Tenor^[9] in the following days and weeks (shown below). A September 18th Reddit post by user can_a_dude_a_taco on /r/bingus^[10] claims that the original creator of Bingus, who is alleged to be friends with haydongers, wished to remain anonymous.

In a similar fashion to Big Floppa and caracals, people began using "Bingus" as a generic nickname for Sphynx cats following the trend.

Related Memes

Heart Locket GIF / My Beloved

In early October 2020, an unknown user created a Heart Locket GIF using MakeSweet^[12] generator with a photograph of Bingus, captioning it "bingus my beloved," with the image going viral in now-defunct Binguscord Discord server (shown below). On October 11th, Tenor^[13] user Desphanitom uploaded the GIF. The GIF spawned both Heart Locket GIF and My Beloved memes.

Self-Replicating Tweets

Self-Replicating Tweets refers to a type of tweet utilizing the Conversational Ads tweet promotion function. The tweets created using the function have one or several buttons which, when pressed, generate an exact copy of the original tweet and prompt the user to post it to their timeline. Initially gaining popularity in late 2020 with Bingus and Carp tweets, the format gained a notable presence on Twitter in 2021. The first self-replicating tweet^[13], which featured Bingus, was posted by user @koopashi on November 25th, 2020.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References