About

Laughing Nervously "What the Fuck?" or Laughing Nervously "WTF?" is a reaction image and series of image macro memes using a scene from Veep season two, episode three in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus turns from a crowd, smiles to her team and says, "What the fuck?" The episode aired in April 2013 and became the subject of memes as early as May 2016 as a way of presenting a nervous reaction to something.

Origin

On April 28th, 2013, season two, episode three of Veep, titled "Hostages," aired in the United States.^[1] In the episode, the character Selina Meyer, played by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the vice president of the U.S., visits the Marine Corps base at Quantico. While there, she holds a conference where she is offered to shoot a gun. She turns to her team, nervously smiles and laughs and says, "What the fuck?"

The earliest known meme to use the scene was posted by X^[2] user @amandamcoughlin on May 4th, 2016, as a reaction to the news of Trump's decision to run for president, garnering over 340 likes in nine years. The post was reuploaded to the Tumblr^[3] page redwhiteandbluth that day, garnering over 106,000 notes in the same span of time.

Spread

The meme became increasingly popularized over the following years as both a reaction image and the source of image macros. On January 18th, 2021, a now-deleted Redditor posted a meme to the subreddit /r/memes^[4] about the English language that gained over 13,000 upvotes in four years.

On January 30th, a now-deleted Redditor posted a version of the meme to /r/memes^[5] about seeing calendars that start with Sunday as the first day of the week rather than Monday, garnering over 4,200 upvotes in three weeks.

On February 14th, 2025, Redditor u/MahmoudAO posted a version of the meme to the subreddit /r/dankmemes^[6] reading, "When I open linkedin to find a job, but it's just a bunch of people wanting to sell me stuff," garnering over 1,000 upvotes in three days.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References