Oh My God, They Were Roommates

About

Oh My God, They Were Roommates is a quote from a popular Vine video that grew into a popular meme on Tumblr, referenced in various text posts and jokes where the quote is taken out of context.

Origin

On October 25th, 2014, Vine user ig @mattsukkar^[1] uploaded a video in which he films a conversation a woman walking past him is having on the phone. The only line of he heres from the conversation is the woman saying "…and they were roommates!" to which he turns the camera towards his face and says "Oh my god, they were roommates…" The Vine gaines over 380,000 likes, 188,000 revines, and over 60 million loops (reupload shown below).

Spread

Following the post on Vine, an embed of the video began circulating on Tumblr that gained over 807,000 notes.^[2] On November 21st, Tumblr user gopteenchoiceawards^[3] uploaded one of the earliest posts to take the Vine out of context, uploading a picture of the face at the end of the video with the caption "when u realize they were roommates." The post gained over 200 notes (shown below).

The majority of posts referencing the Vine were text based and often followed a pattern where one user would say something to the effect of "they were roommates" and another user would reblog the post with "oh my god, they were roommates…" For example, a post from iamthebestby2ne1 starting the joke was reblogged by melongorl,^[4] who finished the joke, on October 28th, 2016, gaining over 143,000 notes (shown below, left). On August 8th, 2017, Tumblr user pettyqueer^[5] did the same on a post by shelovesjinyoung, gaining over 111,000 notes (shown below, right).

The phrase has been used in fandom circles of Tumblr as well, referring to certain ships, implying that "they were roommates!" led to a romantic pairing. For example, a post by fandomlife-universe about Harry Potter characters Oliver Wood and Percy Weasley being in the same graduating class at Hogwarts led to posts by animateglee and niranhesr^[6] completing the text of the Vine, gaining over 73,000 notes (shown below, left). A post by podcast Welcome to Night Vale fan blog night-vale-community-radio^[7] referenced the Vine and gained over 1,600 notes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References