About

Bowling Alley Screen When You Get a Strike refers to a series of memes referencing celebration animations typically shown on TV screens at bowling centers when a player manages to score a strike. The trend received significant spread on Reddit in mid-May 2019.

Origin

On May 6th, 2019, YouTube user KeyZ posted a video titled "1700s Sea Shanties 10 Hour" showing a 3D-animation of a pirate holding a microphone and dancing next to a boombox, with the video gaining over 130,000 views in two weeks. On May 9th, 2019, YouTube user A Guy (previously Kraken Gaming) commented "The screen at the bowling alley when you get a strike", with the reply gaining over 690 likes in one week.^[1]

Spread

On May 20th, Redditor apoplax used the joke in a post to /r/dankmemes subreddit which gained over 32,500 upvotes in 19 hours (shown below).^[2]

In the following hours, multiple similar memes were posted in /r/dankmemes and other subreddits. For example, on the same day Redditor paxton99 made a post which gained over 29,400 upvotes in 15 hours (shown below, left).^[3] On May 21st, 2019, Redditor JamesBald007 posted a version of the meme which garnered over 40,600 upvotes in seven hours (shown below, right).^[4]

Related Memes

NSFW Bowling Animation

NSFW Bowling Animations refers to a series of NSFW and offensive animations that parody stereotypical animations that play at bowling alleys when a player gets a spare or a strike. In April 2022, one particular animation in which a bowling ball ejaculates inside a bowling pin with a strong enough force to send it flying into other pins and knock them down achieved notoriety on social media, with users making memes and jokes referencing it.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References