About

Freddie Mercury ASMRs refers to a series of memes in which British singer Freddie Mercury sings out various imagined life experiences. The format gained popularity on Instagram and YouTube in October 2019.

Origin

The earliest viral meme which utilized Freddie Mercury's vocals for a comedic effect was posted by YouTube user Glass Cactus on April 22nd, 2018. This Musicans Riding a Rollercoaster meme utilized Queen song "We Are the Champions" and received over 31,600 views in one and a half years (shown below, left).^[1] On January 1st, 2019, YouTuber William Maranci poster a similar meme based on the song which gained over 1.5 million views in 11 months (shown below, right).^[2]

The trend did not see any pronounced spread until on September 25th and 27th, 2019, Instagram user ins.step posted two videos of Freddie Mercury singing out his imagined life experiences, titled "freddie mercury gets sick and doesnt want to go to school tomorrow.mp3" and "freddie mercury stubs his toe and it really hurts.mp3."^[3][4] The videos received 4,100 views and 1,400 likes and 4,800 views and 1,500 likes, respectively.

Spread

On October 5th, YouTube user Preston Garvey posted a cropped version of the ins.step's video to YouTube, with the repost receiving over 1 million views in three weeks.^[5] On the same day, Redditor ssynec linked the video in /r/youtubehaiku subreddit where it gained over 6,800 upvotes in the same period.^[6]

On October 6th, 2019, YouTube user AviationWaters posted a video titled "Freddie Mercury Loses His Mom In A Grocery Store," which gained over 8,100 views in three weeks.^[7] On October 9th, 2019, YouTuber MoonNexus reposted the other ins.step's video, with the repost receiving over 131,000 views in two weeks.^[8]

On October 13th, YouTube user Lachlan Kell posted a Freddy Mercury ASMR edit titled "Freddie Mercury gets Trapped in a Slide and Calls out for Mamma (ASMR)" to YouTube and Instagram,^[9][10] with the video receiving over 554,500 and 23,800 views in one week, respectively (shown below). A Reddit post to /r/youtubehaiku gained over 21,500 upvotes.^[11]

In the following week, multiple YouTube and Instagram users posted more versions of the meme utilizing popular Queen songs. For example, a video titled "Freddie Mercury Goes To Space" by YouTuber WindKraken received over 109,000 views in one week (shown below, left).^[12] An edit titled "Freddie Mercury Gets Lost In The Park Looking For Joe" by YouTuber Yoel gained over 630,000 views in the same period (shown below, right).^[13]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References