About

Guy Pointing at Himself, also known as White Guy Pointing at His Chest, refers to a stock photograph of a young man pointing at himself with a confused expression. He is white with short brown hair and a white T-shirt. The photo became a reaction image and the subject of an image macro series in the 2020s, peaking in mid-2025 on TikTok, Twitter / X and Reddit, among other social media sites. The image is typically used to express confused shock, like the reaction of someone who's being accused of something, or saying, "Me?" It went viral as a TikTok comment in May 2025, following a TikTok update that allowed photo comments.

Origin

On October 13th, 2012, stock photographer Sabphoto uploaded a photo called "Irresolute Young Man Pointing with a finger at Himself. Isolated On The White Background" to the website Shutterstock,^[1] and others like Dreamstime,^[2] where it was called "Teenager Pointing At Himself." The image shows a young man in a white T-shirt pointing at himself with his right hand, meant to express confusion (shown below).

Currently, Tumblr^[3] user sablestine is the first known internet user to use the image memetically. It was a reblog shared on June 6th, 2022, in response to a photoshop of a mouse pointing at the viewer. It received over 5,900 notes in three years (shown below).

Spread

The image gained viral spread heading into the 2020s, peaking in May 2025. For instance, on May 6th, TikToker^[4] @ilovedaveshotchicken0 posted the image in a photo slideshow, adding the caption, "When the teacher calls on me but I lwk [lowkey] haven't been paying attention," gaining over 137,500 likes in 18 days (shown below).

On May 10th, 2025, X^[5] user @safehavenns tweeted the image, captioning it, "How I look when my parents accuse me of relapsing (I did)," receiving over 2,200 likes in 13 days (shown below).

During the same timeframe on TikTok, the image became associated with comment sections, following a TikTok update that allowed users to comment with images from their camera rolls.^[7] TikToker^[8] @goofangelalt explained the trend in a video shared on May 22nd, 2025 (shown below).

Before that, TikToker^[6] @emmettxy posted an edit of "Photos to comment" on May 16th. Users in the comment section also called it the "Photo comment starter pack." The edit started with the Guy Pointing at Himself image. In a week, the video received over 130,100 likes (shown below).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References