Kyle

About

Kyle is an online caricature of a white boy referenced as an antagonistic character in memes. Similar to how Karen is used online, "Kyle" jokes parody of a certain kind of person with a set of characteristics one associates with the name; in "Kyle's" case, these are characteristics of an angry white male teenager. "Kyle" is generally presented as rage-filled and aggressive, and he is a fan of Monster Energy Drinks and Axe body spray, which has been documented in the Kyle Punches Drywall meme.

Origin

Kyle jokes can be traced back to a popular Vine video posted November 3rd, 2015 by Nick Colleti titled "White Kid Fight," in which he yells "What the FUCK is up Kyle?!?" The Vine gained over 536,000 likes and 271,000 revines (shown below).

Spread

On November 19th, 2016, Redditor ActuallyKyle made the subreddit /r/Kyle,^[5] which as of June 4th, 2019, has over 4,300 subscribers. More elaborate Kyle memes began appearing in the summer of 2018. On June 29th, 2018, a post on /r/dankchristianmemes^[1] by user action_jim showed a baby getting Monster poured over its head with the caption "This is how you baptize kids named Kyle," gaining over 10,000 points (shown below, left). On October 30th, a post by SchitzPopinov719 in /r/memes^[2] referencing the character gained over 1,400 points (shown below, right).

Kyle Punches Drywall

The "Kyle" character spread much wider in the Kyle Punches Drywall meme. Kyle Punches Drywall refers to a series of jokes about how a hypothetical character named Kyle gets so angry that he punches a hole through a wall made of drywall. "Kyle" also enjoys Monster Energy drinks after the initial joke depicted him with a collection of the beverage. On April 18th, 2019, Twitter user @vinnybrack posted a "Nobody:" joke about "kids named Kyle," showing a shirtless white boy with a collection of Monster Energy drinks and a hole punched into drywall. The tweet gained over 29,000 retweets and 128,000 likes (shown below).

In response to the tweet, two Twitter users with the handle "Kyle" posted pictures of themselves next to holes punched in drywall, ostensibly affirming the joke in @vinnybrack's tweet (shown below).

Eventually, the tweet spread to Reddit, where the joke took on new life as users made myriad jokes about "Kyle" punching drywall. On May 7th, 2019 Redditor trustworthy-adult posted the original tweet to /r/dankmemes, gaining over 1,500 likes. The following day, a joke appeared in /r/me_irl,^[3] gaining over 44,000 points (shown below, left). A "Nobody:" joke posted in /r/memes posted May 11th gained over 4,000 points (shown below, right).

Further Spread

On May 27th, 2019, YouTuber Trevor Wallace posted a video in which he performed the exaggerated "Kyle" character, gaining over a million views (shown below).

Meanwhile, the character became popular in captions in /r/okbuddyretard. For example, a May 31st, 2019 post by thatboydrewski^[3] using the character gained over 10,000 points (shown below, left). A May 28th post by Jameelo^[4] in the subreddit gained over 1,300 points (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References