ABOUT

Mingyu At the Swimming Pool is a k-pop meme about a member of the boy group SEVENTEEN that originated from a series of tweets posted on the official Twitter account of the group. In the tweets, it shows multiple pictures of one of the members, rapper Kim Mingyu, who was posing at a swimming pool in Singapore during their Shining Diamond Asia Tour on around August 12, 2016 to August 18, 2016. Mingyu posed in a total of six different photos, dressed in swimming trunks, tank top and a flowery swimming cap.

ORIGIN

The tweet garnered a total of 23 000+ retweets and 34 000+ likes over a period of four days. After the first tweet was posted with two photos of him (one of him doing a half-lunge and another of him standing ankle-deep in the shallow end of the pool), fans of SEVENTEEN, also known as Carats, began to superimpose Mingyu's poses and face onto various pictures and GIFs, such as on the edge of a cliff and in a yoga class. A few days later on August 18, Mingyu tweeted from the official account that he had seen some of the fan-made edits, and posted four more pictures of himself in the same pool, this time leaning over the edge of the pool with his arms out, sitting on the edge of the pool, lowering one of his feet into the pool and peeking out of the water while submerged, all while still wearing the same outfit, which got 19 000 retweets and 26 000+ likes within six hours. A third tweet was also posted almost immediately after with Mingyu sitting on the edge of the pool, which resulted in 16 000+ retweets and 23 000+ likes. These pictures of Mingyu were also Photoshopped into other pictures (such as on a diving board in the 2012 London Summer Olympics and in a screenshot of Korean singer/songwriter PSY's music video, Gangnam Style). By this time, other non-Carat members of the k-pop fandom began to notice the trend and started posting edits of their own, making Mingyu At the Swimming Pool a popular k-pop trend on Twitter and Instagram.

EXAMPLES:

(cr: @pledis_17)

(cr: @scoups88)

(cr: @pledis_17)

(cr: @MooooocciR)

LINKS:

The first tweet with Mingyu's photos at @pledis_17 (captions in Korean only): Here
Mingyu's tweet stating he saw some of the edits (in Korean): Here"
The second tweet with three more photos (captions in Korean only): Here
The third tweet with two photos (captions in Korean only): Here