About

Fish Turns Around is a caption meme format based on an image of a fish from SpongeBob SquarePants turning his head to check behind itself. In September 2019, the Twitch emote ModCheck based on the GIF was added to BetterTTV, with the emote gaining prominence as a way to convey the Who Asked? meme and as a call for mods.

Origin

On October 21st, 2000, episode 20a, titled "Hooky," of season one of the cartoon series SpongeBob SquarePants premiered.^[1] In one scene of the episode, the main character SpongeBob slides back to the kitchen inside a wooden box, with a background character known as Incidental 41 turning his head while seated at a table as SpongeBob slides past him (GIF shown below).

Now get back to the kitchen tlil I miss money!
- Ay, ay, Mr. Krabs!

On April 30th, 2015, Tumblr^[2] gimmick account sbspgifs posted the GIF, with the post gaining over 310 likes and reblogs in seven years.

Reaction Image

Prior to April 19th, 2019, an unknown Twitter user posted a cropped frame of the fish turning its head, captioning it, "me looking around at different things to avoid looking people in the eyes" (original post could not be discovered). On April 19th, Redditor^[3] ByeByeMan666 made the earliest found repost of the meme, with the post gaining over 10,100 upvotes in the /r/memes subreddit in three years (shown below).

ModCheck Twitch Emote

On September 15th, 2019, Twitch^[4] user VerbalSilence added a BetterTTV emote called "modCheck" based on the cropped GIF of the fish turning its head (shown below). The emote was enabled by over 125,000 Twitch channels in three years.

Spread

Reaction Image

On April 18th, 2019, Redditor dankbob_memepants_ posted a caption meme based on the image to the /r/MemeEconomy^[5] subreddit, where it gained over 1,000 upvotes in roughly three years (shown below, left). Starting in late April 2019, the caption format achieved a notable presence on Reddit. For example, on April 23rd, 2019, Redditor^[6] swipefist posted a caption meme that gained over 7,400 upvotes in /r/me_irl in roughly three years (shown below, center). On September 10th, 2019, Redditor Lord_Fucknut posted a meme that gained over 45,500 upvotes in the /r/teenagers^[7] subreddit in three years.

In the following years, the reaction image spread to and saw continuous use on other platforms, including Tumblr^[8] and Twitter.^[9]

ModCheck

The Twitch emoji did not see virality until July 29th, 2020, when Redditor^[10] Ilan-Arru posted a petition to add it to streamer xQc's channel, with the post gaining over 2,700 upvotes in two years. Later that day, xQc then enabled the emoji on his Twitch channel.^[11]

In the following months, the emoji was added by multiple Twitch channels, peaking in popularity in May 2021. In addition to its primary purpose to either attract mods' attention or pretend-check if the mods are looking when misbehaving, the emoji achieved strong association with the Who Asked / Nobody Asked meme, sometimes being spammed when a streamer went on a rant or shared a personal anecdote.^[12]

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References