About

Four Lads In Jeans refers to a viral photograph of four British men in tight denim pants standing side-by-side. The image became the subject of memes as an exploitable format in 2020 leading into 2021 based on the way the men are dressed, looking like stereotypical British "lads" on a night out. In August 2022, a statue of the Four Lads In Jeans went viral after it was unveiled at the cultural festival Birmingham's Big Weekender.

Origin

On July 6th, 2019, @cj_humps_tattoos uploaded a photograph of himself and three other friends from Birmingham and Coventry in England before a night out at the bar to Instagram,^[1] along with the caption, "Tight trousers chose us" (shown below). The photo gained over 1,200 likes in over a year. The lads' names are Alex Lacey, Jamie Philips, Kevin Rooney, and Connor Humpage.

According to an interview published by The Tab,^[2] the image was screenshotted by a big meme page on Facebook, where it received over 500,000 likes. The page and post in question are unspecified and currently unknown.

Spread

In mid-2020 the image began to spread, inspiring memes across social media, particularly on Twitter. One of the earliest memes using the photograph was uploaded to Twitter^[3] on May 19th, 2020 by @BoxeoDeBlog, who tweeted, “AJ batters Muhammad Ali …” along with the photo, imagining something the lads in the image might say, garnering over 20,000 likes and 1,900 retweets in 8 months (shown below, left). On May 19th, @mediobentro tweeted,^[5] "Peaky Blinders is quality mate, Tom Hardy surely the best actor going" garnering over 34,500 likes and 5,000 retweets in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).

On June 9th, @harrisonjbrock tweeted,^[4] “Yeah he might have been a bit racist, but defacing a Winston Churchill statue is just too far mate.” along with the photo, imagining the boys as stereotypical conservative British lads, a theme applied to many memes using the image (shown below, left).

On June 10th, The Tab published an interview with the four men from the photo, who admit that the memes are funny, but that they do not condone or enjoy the ones that paint them as stereotypically conservative or racist, as that is not who they are, making particular mention of a meme referencing George Floyd in a bad light along with their image (shown below, right). The tweet has since been removed as well as the account that made it.

On January 12th, 2021, @KyleHogan98 tweeted,^[6] "Isn’t it mad that 4 lads got a picture together before a night out and are now memes for the rest of their lifes hahahahahah" garnering over 40,500 likes and 1,200 retweets in 6 days. On January 14th, @vonstrenginho tweeted,^[7] "Sea shanty tiktok is WILD" along with a deepfake video of the four lads singing the sea shanty "Wellerman," which went viral on TikTok in late 2020, garnering over 180,000 likes and 43,000 retweets in 4 days (shown below).

On January 18th, LADbible^[8] and Mirror^[9] published interviews with the lads, the latter in which they describe how their mothers were trolled for the memes. On the same day, Tyla^[10] published an article sharing a rumor that the lads may appear on the next season of the UK reality dating show Love Island.

Netflix Series

On February 1st, 2021, on their TikTok account, the Four Lads in Jeans announced a Netflix special entitled Making the Meme, which they wrote would be released in December 2021. The series was reported on by HITC^[11] on February 2nd.

Statue by Tat Vision

On August 27th, 2022, Birmingham Live^[12] reported on the unveiling of a statue made to resemble the meme, placed in the exact spot in Birmingham where the photograph was taken. On that day the artist posted several images of the statue to Instagram,^[13] including one with the lads, garnering over 1,800 likes in two days (shown below, left and right). The statue, made of papier-mache and painted bronze, is a temporary installation for the Birmingham Weekender 2022 art festival.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References