About

Intrusive Thoughts Won and Letting Intrusive Thoughts Win are catchphrases used to caption memes in which people, usually celebrities, exhibit behavior that breaks social norms. In memes, intrusive thoughts are typically confused with impulsive behavior. Starting in April 2023, a meme subformat in which users imagine the consequences of letting their intrusive thoughts win achieved virality, spreading to multiple sites and platforms over the following months.

Origin

The catchphrases "he let intrusive thoughts win" and "she let intrusive thoughts win" first gained prominence on stan Twitter in June 2022 as users captioned videos of K-pop idols and other celebrities exhibiting peculiar behavior alongside the phrases. For example, on June 5th, 2022, Twitter^[1] user @hoseoksreally made one of the earliest discovered posts using the phrase to go viral, which received over 2,100 retweets and 12,500 likes in one year (shown below).

Spread

In early July 2022, a video of Corey Lewandowski's 'Womp Womp' interview captioned "Evilmaxxing intrusive thoughts won" went viral on social media (original author unknown, YouTube^[2] upload shown below). On July 15th, 2022, TikToker^[3] @sbeveboi reposted the meme, with the upload gaining over 1.6 million views and 316,000 likes in one year.

Play

On October 4th, 2022, Twitter^[4] user @CrowleyCorvid made a tweet about the meme, writing that others confused intrusive thoughts with impulsive thoughts. The tweet (shown below) received over 15,500 retweets and 98,400 likes in nine months.

In late 2022 and early 2023, the phrases maintained their prevalence as commonly used captions. For example, on February 4th, 2023, Hasbulla's parody Twitter^[5] account @HasbullaHive captioned a video of one of his friends pretending to toss him out of a car's window with the phrase. The tweet (shown below) received over 23,700 retweets and 181,000 likes in five months.

When you let the intrusive thoughts win 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/mU5yTL8oVH

— Hasbulla 🐐 (@HasbullaHive) February 4, 2023

In April 2023, a parody format in which users imagined the consequences of them succumbing to their intrusive thoughts gained popularity, For example, on April 25th, 2023, the Facebook^[6] page Common Anomaly posted an image caption meme that received over 26,000 reactions and 104,000 shares in two months (shown below, left).

Related Memes

Lunging for the Officer's Gun

Lunging for the Officer's Gun refers to a series of memes about the intrusive thought of making a lunge for a police officer's service weapon, an incident that can possibly end up with the officer retaliating and killing the person instead. Spawned by a viral Snail in My Ear meme in late 2022, the meme achieved significant virality in March 2023.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References