About

Cats Meowing Into Microphones is a video fad and social challenge. In the game, participants hold a colorful microphone, which has an echo effect active, to a cat's mouth and encourage it to scream.

Origin

While there have long been videos of cats meowing into microphones, one of the earliest was posted on June 18th, 2010 by YouTuber Mary Kate Smith (shown below, left). Eight years later, YouTuber its ur boi that screams a lot posted a video of a cat meowing into a small microphone. The post received more than 20,000 views in less than one year (shown below, right).

However, one of the prime attributes that distinguish the fad is the appearance of a colorful microphone. The earliest example of this was posted by Twitter user @zainapmeu on August 29th, 2018. The tweet received more than 18,000 retweets and 27,000 likes in less than one year (shown below).

تذكرون لما قلت لكم انه يصيح عشان يبي ياخذ اكلي ايه ترا اقصد هذا pic.twitter.com/PvAI8y481R

— زين (@zainapmeu) August 29, 2018

Spread

In December 2018, TikTok user kizaruwu posted a video of a cat meowing into a microphone. The video has since been deleted. However, on December 20th, 2018, Facebook ^[1] user Diễm My shared the video on their Facebook profile, where it received more than 23,000 reactions, 50 comments and 54,000 shares in less than six months. It was also uploaded by YouTuber Rock Man on December 23rd, 2018. It received more than 333,000 views in six months (shown below, left).

The following month, on January 10th, Instagram ^[2] user @justmangobrown posted a variation of trend. The post received more than 129,000 likes and 1.2 million views in five months (shown below, right).

On January 19th, 2019, Twitter^[3] user @official_anda posted a thread of examples of the trend. The post received more than 5,800 retweets and 11,000 likes in five months.

Several months later, on May 11th, Twitter user @b0redangel shared a variation as a reaction video, sharing a Nobody variation about the video game Luigi's Mansion. The post received more than 79,000 retweets, 235,000 likes and 2.3 million views in less than one week (shown below).

Several media outlets covered the meme, including The Daily Dot ^[4] and Thrillist.^[5]

nobody:the ghosts in Luigi’s mansion: pic.twitter.com/caoz4DXLeh

— sarah tonin (@b0redangel) May 11, 2019

Various Examples

Happy Caturday! 🐱💗🐈Taco Cat with Microphone 🎤🎵🎶🎵🎤 pic.twitter.com/f7LGI4VfAs

— Ask Precious 🐱 (@AskPreciousCat) January 19, 2019

My son’s going to be a star . Guys please make him famous pic.twitter.com/G5Vp2X8780

— yanira ♡ (@ariii_nay) May 10, 2019

Search Interest

External References