About

Hold Up!! His Writing Is This Fire??? refers to a YouTube thumbnail turned reaction image showing a Black man wearing glasses with his hands up and text reading the aforementioned catchphrase in all caps. The thumbnail's original video was posted by YouTuber RobTV in June 2023, titled, "First Time Hearing BILLY JOEL." In the video, he listened to Billy Joel's "Piano Man." The thumbnail became a reaction image and exploitable on Twitter / X and elsewhere in 2024. It was often used in quote tweets. Overall, it was used to humorously highlight good writing from unexpected accounts, users, memes and other screenshots with text.

Origin

On June 30th, 2023, YouTuber^[1] RobTV posted a video called "First Time Hearing BILLY JOEL" in which he listened to the song "Piano Man." Over one year, the video received roughly 536,400 views (shown below).

The video's thumbnail showed RobTV with his hands up and a text caption reading in all caps, "HOLD UP!! HIS WRITING IS THIS FIRE???" RobTV is wearing a black Nike shirt and glasses in the thumbnail (shown below).

Spread

On July 18th, 2023, X^[2] user @ettingermentum tweeted a screenshot of the YouTube thumbnail with the name of RobTV's video in frame, gaining over 42,000 likes in a year (shown below).

The tweet earned a reaction from YouTuber RobTV who quoted^[3] it on July 19th, gaining over 360 likes in a year (shown below).

On October 31st, 2023, X^[4] user @sigmatic_ recaptioned the YouTube screenshot, making the video's title read, "First Time Hearing ASSYRIAN TABLET COMPLAINING ABOUT IMPROPER COPPER TRANSACTIONS," gaining over 3,400 likes in 11 months (shown below).

The abovementioned meme was later shared on Reddit^[5] in December 2023.

Going into 2024, usage of the YouTube thumbnail continued to go viral. For instance, on August 25th, 2024, X^[6] user @StellaNoxEclair used the image to joke about the writing in a lewd visual novel, gaining over 28,000 likes in a month (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References