About

If You Actually Like When Movies Do This, full name If You Actually Like When Movies Do This You Can Kiss My Ass, is a catchphrase originating from a bait post parodying viral discussions of tropes in media. The post pairs the phrase with an illustration broadly outlining the Hero's Journey trope, one of the longest and most well-established tropes in all of fiction. The post led to discourse from people who were unaware it was bait as well as further parodies using the catchphrase.

Origin

On September 29th, 2024, Twitter user @PaintraSeaPea,^[1] who just 20 minutes prior had posted a viral trend in recent media parody showing a "quick to anger ducklike character and his three color-coordinated nephews," posted an image showing a simplified, two-panel illustration of the Hero's Journey, an old trope in fiction about how a main character starts a normal life but goes on an adventure and gains confidence and friends upon its completion.^[2] They captioned the post, "If you actually like when movies do this you can kiss my ass," gaining over 5,000 retweets and 64,000 likes in four days.

Spread

In subsequent posts, @PaintraSeaPea^[2] hinted that the post was a parody. Their follow-up tweet read, "'This is just storytelling,' 'This describes every movie,' Look, if that were true, don't you think my post would look quite ridiculous? Why would someone intentionally say something so obviously absurd? Have you really stumbled upon the dumbest person alive?"

Despite that, many users on social media posted popular jokes and criticisms of the tweet without realizing it was a parody. For example, on September 30th, 2024, Twitter user @FighterPosting^[3] quote-tweeted the post joking, "Bro is beefing with the Hero's Journey," gaining over 15,000 retweets and 253,000 likes in three days.

The same day, user @not_weav^[4] bemoaned the widespread criticism of the tweet, writing, "twitter users are so desperate to dunk they shut their brains off and take the most blatant bait ever written," gaining over 140 retweets and 1,300 likes in the same time period.

The catchphrase itself also led to parodies. On September 30th, user @aidannotaydan^[5] posted a parody in which the catchphrase was posted with an image saying "Movie starts / Movie ends," gaining over 70 likes in three days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References