Chinese Man Yelling at a Kitten

About

Chinese Man Yelling at a Kitten refers to a popular video edit series consisting of spliced-together footage of a Chinese man yelling and a kitten in a towel mewing, appearing as if the Chinese man is yelling at the kitten. The video inspired popular lip-dub edits and remixes in early 2021, particularly on YouTube and Instagram.

Origin

Source Video Origins

On August 29th, 2016, Instagram^[1] user suzie_and_kushie uploaded a video of someone holding a black-and-white kitten from a first-person POV, garnering over 84,000 views in four years (shown below).

On June 19th, 2020, YouTuber^[2] UltraUrinat0r uploaded a video titled, "POV: Chinese Man Yelling At You," in which a Chinese man yells at the camera in Chinese while holding a cigarette, garnering over 5,500 views in eight months (shown below). The exact origin of the video is currently unknown.

Gato Falando

On November 14th, 2020, YouTube^[15] user Ismael Martins posted a video titled "GATO FALANDO BARRIL," editing League of Legends character Gangplank's voice line "Barril!" from the Portuguese version of the game into the video. The video received over 734,000 views, spawning a trend among Portuguese users in the following months, with users editing in various voice lines from video games and films (example shown below, right).

Chinese Man Yelling at Kitten

Prior to December 26th, 2020, an unknown user uploaded a video consisting of spliced-together footage from both of the videos above where it appears as if the Chinese man is yelling at the kitten. On December 26th, 2020, YouTube^[3] channel Internet Things reuploaded the video, garnering over 43,000 views in two months (shown below). This is the earliest found reupload of the video, which was reposted numerous times to YouTube^[4][5] over the following weeks.

Spread

By early 2021, the video gained enough traction to inspire remixes, with a number of popular variants arriving by late February. Most of these are lip dub formats, where the audio is replaced to make it appear as if the Chinese man and kitten are speaking, singing or making various noises. For example, on January 3rd, 2021, YouTuber^[6] Dog Backwards uploaded a new version of the video, replacing the footage of the angry Chinese man with different footage of a Chinese man yelling (shown below).

On February 6th, Twitter^[7] user @ScourgeSolace uploaded a Friday Night Funkin' themed version of the video, which was reuploaded on February 11th by YouTuber^[8] suffer_maestro where it gained over 13,000 views in under a month (shown below, right).

On February 23rd, Instagram^[9] user @PGODcomedy uploaded three different edits of the video in a slide post in which it appears as if the Chinese man and the kitten are lip-dubbing to various songs, garnering over 10,400 likes in a week (shown below, left). On the same day, Instagram^[10] user @monkeyman.heh posted a version of the meme referencing the video game Among Us (shown below, right).

On February 27th, Instagram^[13] user @pinkbooi uploaded a version of the meme set to audio mentioning Fortnite, Minecraft and PubG in a hard-to-decipher accent, garnering over 64,000 views in four days (shown below).

On February 28th, YouTuber^[11] memes by cowbelly uploaded a lip-dubbed version of the meme by Instagrammer^[12] @spicynutt titled, "don't yell at this cat," garnering over 205,000 views in three days and increasing interest in the format (shown below, left). The channel uploaded another version of the meme to YouTube^[14] on March 3rd, garnering over 64,000 views in under a day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References