About

D.W. Holding Fence is an image macro series featuring a screenshot from the American children's animated television series Arthur of the character D.W. in a pink swimsuit and sunglasses holding her hand up to a chain-link fence. Online, people use the image as a reaction to express feelings of longing or exclusion.

Origin

On April 4th, 2005, PBS^[1] aired the episode of Arthur "Arthur Makes Waves." In the episode, D.W. wants to go swimming, but the pool is closed for repairs. When she approaches the pool, she holds onto the chain-link fence that borders it.

Spread

On June 3rd, 2014, Twitter ^[2] user @IHaveAMeme tweeted the image with the caption "All the seniors young side hoes gonna be at graduation like." The tweet received more than 2,100 likes and 1,700 retweets in less than six years (shown below, left).

About one month later, on July 4th, Tumblr ^[3] user armadillo posted a screenshot of the image with the caption "when your friends do something cool without you." The post received more than 485,000 notes in less than six years (shown below, center).

The meme continued to spread over the next few years. On July 28th, 2016, Twitter^[4] user @itsjae_wolf tweeted, "When u followed yo dude cause you think he cheatin but he's exactly where he supposed to be #authur #arthur." The tweet received more than 2,000 likes and 1,000 retweets in less than four years (shown below, right).

2020 Resurgence

During the quarantine period of the coronavirus outbreak in March 2020, the meme made a resurgence. On March 24th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @siinverguenzaaa tweeted the image with the caption "ik the streets miss me." The tweet received more than 196,000 likes and 68,000 retweets in less than one week (shown below, left).

Following the post, people began posting the image next to images and photographs of things that they miss during the quarantine. On March 28th, Twitter^[6] user @_Seiani posted an image of D.W. reacting to a photo of a gym. The tweet received more than 61,000 likes and 23,000 retweets in less than four days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References