About

First Guy To refers to a series of memes imagining reactions of first people to ever do a certain thing, primarily based on images of Drew Scanlon (Blinking White Guy) and George "Joji" Miller. With the first viral instance of the meme posted in September 2017, the format received widespread recognition in August 2019.

Origin

On September 14th, 2017, Tumblr user thebois posted a three-panel image of musician and former YouTube comedian George "Joji" Miller captioned "The fist guy who beat his meat must've been like," with the post receiving over 8,600 likes and reblogs in two years (shown below).^[1]

Spread

While the format received no notable spread in until October 2018, in 2019, Surprised Joji memes caption "First Guy To" achieved moderate on Instagram and Reddit. For example, on October 18th, 2018, Redditor omarys248 posted one such meme to /r/trebuchetmemes subreddit, where it gained over 13,000 upvotes in six months (shown below, left).^[2]

The first variation of the First Guy To meme featuring images of Drew Scanlon (Blinking White Guy) is unknown. On July 24th, 2019, Redditor johnyisme posted the earliest known meme of this subformat to /r/dankmemes subreddit, with the post gaining over 35,200 upvotes in two months (shown below).^[3]

The Blinking White Guy version of First Guy To saw the limited spread on Reddit until August 21st, 2019, when the format received a significant surge in popularity due to several popular examples of the format being posted.^[4][5] In the following weeks, multiple notable versions of the format were posted on Reddit, Instagram and other online platforms.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References