About

Harold, They're Lesbians is a catchphrase based on a 2015 Tumblr about an experience seeing the 2015 film Carol, which follows the story of a lesbian romance. The phrase grew in popularity in the LGBTQ+ community humorously expressing the experience of a straight person's sudden confrontation with queer culture.

Origin

On December 11th, 2015, Tumblr^[1] user @thcully posted, "I really don’t know what crowd I expected to be in the theatre for carol at 1:20 in the afternoon on a friday but it was probably 85% old people, old het couples and halfway through the movie this old lady in front of me turned to the old dude next to her and just said 'harold they’re lesbians.'" The post received more than 117,000 notes in less than four years (shown below).

Spread

Shortly after the post went viral, people placed the line into different contexts. For example, Tumblr^[2] user themightyneiin posted a Star Wars Opening Crawl parody. The post received more than 4,600 notes in less than four years (shown below, left).

The following week, on December 20th, Tumblr^[4] user nervouspearl posted a parody of the poster for Carol so that it features the line. The post received more than 15,000 notes in less than four years (shown below, center).

On December 26th, Tumblr^[3] user victorianlesbian posted a GIF from the television series Doctor Who that features the line. The post received more than 475 notes in less than four years (shown below, right).

On December 31st, 2015, the Tumblr^[5] memedocumentation covered the meme.

On December 18th, 2019, the website Vox^[6] included the meme on their list of "11 memes that captured the decade."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References