Homeless Bodyguards

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About

Homeless Bodyguards, also known as Homeless Protectors, refers to a series of anecdotes and memes about homeless people defending those who give them money and food from harm. Spawned by a viral greentext in 2021 and later supported by a story posted on X / Twitter, memes based on the premise achieved popularity on TikTok and other platforms in 2023.

Origin

On August 27th, 2021, an anonymous 4chan^[1] user posted a greentext story about a homeless man in a thread on the /r9k/ board. The greentext recounted an incident where a group of homeless man protected the narrator from muggers in gratitude for him regularly buying them sandwiches and coffee. On that day, Redditor XYoshiaipomX posted a screenshot of the story to the /r/greentext^[2] subreddit, where it gained over 99,600 upvotes in two years.

Anonymous Fri 27 Aug 2021 21:13:07 No.65157997 Report Quoted By: >>65159417 >>65159837 >>65159895 >>65156362 >live in a bad part of town >work at a grocery store >always give hobos the food the store wants to throw out >on cold days, I make a big jug of coffee and hand it out to them >no one ever asks me for cash because they know I'm broke >am known as the "sandwich man" because I usually make sandwiches for them >last year, got mugged walking back home >5 seconds after being confronted I hear "AYO GET AWAY FROM THE SANDWICH MAN!" >4 or 5 homeless guys run to me from half a block away yelling at the mugger to get away from me despite him having a knife >he ran off after they came and they chased after him >follow and there was like 10 of them gathered around and he was pinned to the ground >one called the police and they arrested the guy >was told "if anyone f---- with you sandwich man, we got your back" >mfw I basically have a street gang by giving away day old sandwich meat and bread I am told to throw in the trash

Spread

The post was reuploaded on Reddit, X and other platforms numerous times in the following years. On September 17th. 2022, X^[3] user @c0wbitch shared a similar anecdote, writing about a homeless man in Austin who protected her car from being scratched. The post (shown below) received over 45,400 reposts and 800,000 likes in one year (shown below).

smooth brained brat @cowbitch Thinking about the homeless man in Austin who I used to pay $15 to watch my car while I went out and one night I came back and all the cars around mine were broken into except mine and he was sitting on my hood and said "I ain't let em touch this one miss Kenzie!!!" 11:41 AM . Sep 17, 2022

In February 2023, the stories inspired a meme format on TikTok as users posted video caption memes about homeless people protecting those who give them food and money. On February 10th, 2023, TikTok^[4] user @bantaman69 posted the earliest found meme about the trope, which gained over 73,000 views and 8,000 likes in seven months (shown below, left). On February 14th, TikTok user @walterwhite posted a version that received over 2.4 million views and 489,000 likes in the same period (shown below, right). On February 16th, TikTok^[5] user jxstjosh0 posted a video caption meme that earned over 218,000 likes in the same period (shown below, right)

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7200230684554710278

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7200918430936075563

The meme saw further mutation as the premise "me getting jumped at McDonalds" was combined with other punchlines about unexpected protectors. For example, on February 10th, 2023, TikTok^[6] user @preposterous__ posted a meme about crows coming to their defense that received over 4 million views and 782,000 likes in seven months (shown below).