About

Paul Revere "The British Are Coming" Painting, also known as How I Feel After Telling Everyone X, refers to a series of image macro memes using the "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" painting by Edward Mason Eggleston and other paintings related to the historical event in which American Paul Revere's midnight ride to warn American colonists about the British troops who were poised to attack in 1775. The meme started on TikTok in early November 2024, often used to warn people in fandoms of major news like a new album release, game announcement, anime project or gossip. The trend is also accompanied by the "U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps" band sound.

Origin

On May 4th, 2024, TikTok^[5] user @_giomama_uploaded the earliest online example of "The British Are Coming" meme, using the "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" painting^[2] by Edward Mason Eggleston as a reaction meme, mentioning Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" diss track release. The post read, "How I feel telling my friends Kendrick dropped a THIRD song," and amassed over 694,000 plays and 191,000 likes in a year.

Spread

Paintings of Paul Revere's midnight ride gained viral usage as image macros and exploitable memes on TikTok over the next few months, often paired with texts related to announcements of new projects that might interest a fandom, like new music, album, anime or videogame release.

For instance, on November 22nd, 2024, TikTok^[1] user @expiredgum4 uploaded a version of the meme featuring the macro "How mfs felt after telling everyone Kendrick dropped," referring to American rapper Kendrick Lamar's "GNX" album released on the same day. The post amassed over 11 million plays and 2.5 million likes in six months.

On December 4th, 2024, TikTok^[3] user @idkwhouydkme posted a "Paul Revere's midnight ride" painting, captioning "How it feels telling people that Spotify Wrapped came out." The post (seen below) received more than 52,000 plays and 660 likes in five months.

On December 20th, 2024, X^[6] user @2ukko tweeted, "Tf2 fans telling everyone comic 7 dropped," alongside the image of Paul Revere, gathering over 38,000 likes in six months.

On March 27th, 2025, Tumblr^[7] user @kiwi-jammy posted the Paul Revere image with the caption, "TOMODACHI LIFE IS BACK!!!!!" gathering over 5,000 notes in two months.

On April 16th, 2025, TikTok^[4] user @spoonbeetle posted a version of the meme mentioning the April 2025 4chan Sharty Hack. The post (seen below) amassed more than 4 million plays and 813,000 likes in two days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References