About

John Peelposting refers to the practice of responding to a tweet that features a bizarre collection of words in the voice of British radio presenter and former BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel telling listeners they had just heard a song by a band whose name is comprised of those bizarre words, typically using the phrasal template "And That Was X" alongside the reaction image of Peel sitting at a mixing table. It is also commonly used under tweets by the British Twitter account Fesshole as a way to poke fun at the anonymous confessions the account has tweeted.

Origin

While it's unclear when exactly John Peelposting started, it appears to have originated on Twitter in either late 2019 or early 2020. On January 28th, 2020, Twitter user twlldun noted "The hipsters are all into the John Peel session band name meme now." Twitter user RobDotHutton^[1] replied with an example of the meme in practice (shown below).

Spread

Over the following years, the image of John Peel became a common sight among U.K. Twitter posters, as it was commonly used to respond to tweets with odd words in them. For example, on August 29th, 2022, Twitter user @youwouldknow^[2] used the meme in response to a tweet about French pilots getting into a cockpit fistfight (shown below, left). On October 21st, Twitter user @miserablepig^[3] then posted it in response to a tweet by LAD Bible (shown below, right).

The meme was particularly prevalent underneath tweets from Fesshole, an account that posts anonymous confessions on Twitter. Under nearly every Fesshole tweet in early 2023, a user would spin the confession into a John Peel meme (example shown below, left). On March 29th, 2023, Fesshole posted some of the complaints they'd received from users that were tired of the John Peel memes, though many continued to do so^[4] (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References