I Have This Thing (TikTok Trend)

Part of a series on Taylor Swift's "Midnights". [View Related Entries]

Updated Mar 16, 2023 at 05:53PM EDT by Zach.

Added Mar 16, 2023 at 01:08PM EDT by Brandon.

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About

I Have This Thing is a line spoken at the beginning of the 2022 Taylor Swift song "Anti-Hero," with it opening the song after a short instrumental period. The excerpt from the song with these opening words quickly became an audio and lip-dub trend on TikTok as people began to reword their icks under the guise of it being a quirky thing they have, usually in conjunction with an on-screen caption to set up the meme.

Origin

The song and accompanying music video were both released with the album's official launch on October 21st, 2022. The music video, posted to the official Taylor Swift YouTube^[1] channel, accumulated over 115 million views in four months (shown below). Later that day, the initial audio of Taylor's "I Have This Thing" was then uploaded to TikTok by the account ekelleydesign,^[2] with the original upload since being deleted and the audio having over 38,000 videos done using it as on mid-March 2023.

Spread

One of the earliest TikToks to use the audio comes from the TikToker thatpostaldad,^[3] which played off the lyrics of the song to create a meme by having him (as a postal worker) use the "I Have This Thing" to mean the rug that he was currently delivering. The TikTok, posted on October 24th, 2022, explicitly mentions in the description that roughly 3,192 videos had been made using the sound at the time, making over 3,000 videos within the first 48 hours of the song being live (shown below).

@thatpostaldad This sound has 3192 videos and I swear they've ALL come through my feed. I took that as a sign to jump in on it! #usps #amazon #xyzbca ♬ I have this thing – Emily

The meme template officially started to shift into being about quirks by January 5th, 2023, which is showcased in the TikTok by brooklyn2.0^[4] who uploaded a TikTok of themself being self-conscious about refusing to go on dinner dates because of "this thing," earning over 280,000 likes in two months (shown below).