About

Blud Thinks He’s On The Team and Who Invited My Man Blud, also known as Bro Thinks He’s On The Team, is a catchphrase used to make fun of people in photos and memes who want to be a part of a certain group (like a sports team) but obviously aren't part of the group even though they're trying hard to be or pretending to be. The person is most often referred to by the slang term "Blud" and labeled with a red circle. The most prominent meme in the trend is a photo of Drake sitting with the Kentucky NCAA basketball team while wearing the same warm-up outfits as the players.

Origin

On June 20th, 2021, the YouTube^[1] channel of Adidas Football posted a video called, "Welcome to Speedfulness | X Speedflow Experience," which announced the company's new collaboration.^[2] The YouTube video showed a Zoom call with many professional footballers including Mohamed Salah, Karim Benzema and Scott McTominay, among others. The video received roughly 152,100 views over one year (shown below).

Sometime in late 2021, a currently unknown meme creator on iFunny posted a screenshot of the Adidas Zoom call, circling Manchester United player Scott McTominay and writing, "Who invited my man blud 😭😂" (shown below). The first known repost of the meme was uploaded by Twitter^[3] user M_Shass on August 5th, 2021, captioning it, "Arsenal in the race to sign Messi." The tweet received over 950 likes in one year.

Spread

The meme was reposted to places like Facebook^[4] in October 2021 by the page 101GreatGoalsCom, gaining roughly 3,800 likes in one year. Various football-centric pages on Twitter used the catchphrase outside of the photo's context, like in a tweet posted by Twitter^[5] user CAN1NHO on October 13th, 2021, which gained roughly 9,900 likes in one year (shown below, left). On October 23rd, 2021, Twitter^[6] user and YouTuber DannyAaronsFUT used it to caption a photo of him and his friends, gaining roughly 14,600 likes over the same time period (shown below, right).

On February 17th, 2022, YouTuber^[7] Vanegood posted a video called "who invited my man blud" that narrated the original meme, earning roughly 54,200 views and 4,700 likes in ten months (shown below).

On February 11th, 2022, the Instagram^[8] account nocontextknicks posted a video from Instagram user kendrarandle_'s story from that night's basketball game, showing Knicks player Julius Randle's son standing up for the national anthem with, "He thinks he's on the team 😂😂," written in text. The post received roughly 3,800 views in 1,000 likes in ten months (shown below).

On July 4th, 2022, Twitter^[9] user DiscordReturns used an image of rapper Drake in the Kentucky NCAA basketball locker room with text reading, "Who invited my man blud 😭😭" and "Bro thinks he's on the team😭😭😭" (shown below). Twitter user DiscordReturns captioned the image, "MHA Season 6 pulling up on Chainsaw Man and Mob Psycho Season 3 in October," earning roughly 9,900 likes in five months. Twitter user DiscordReturns is currently the first known meme creator to use the image. Soon after, reposts of the image were first made on Instagram.^[10]

Soon after, redraws were made with the Drake image, like one posted by Twitter^[11] user Foundation__6 on September 24th, 2022, showing Fortnite characters and gaining roughly 2,700 likes in three months (shown below, left). The phrases also simpliied into one phrase of "Blud Thinks He’s On The Team," which was overlayed wth Snapchat text on other images. For instance, on December 6th, 2022, the Instagram^[12] page officialfootballcommunity posted a picture of iShowSpeed at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, gaining roughly 36,900 likes in three days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References