About

Peter Thiel Wave, also known as Peter Thiel Realizing, refers to a reaction meme and GIF caption format featuring billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel looking at the camera as an ocean wave crashes behind him. The clip of Thiel comes from a June 2025 interview with New York Times reporter Ross Douthat, and the footage of the wave crashing comes from the music video for artist Evian Christ's song "Ultra." X user @David_Rudnick is credited with creating the exploitable video, which X users promptly dubbed "Thiel Wave." The video and GIF came to be used as a reaction meme on Twitter / X tech circles in late June and early July 2025.

Origin

Musician Evian Christ released a music video for his song "Ultra" on September 4th, 2020, showing a slowed-down aquamarine wave crashing. The YouTube^[1] video for the track gathered over 100,000 views in four years.

On June 27th, 2025, X^[2] user @_MichaelOswell_ quoted a post about Peter Thiel's Interview with Ross Douthat, writing, "why is this colour-graded like the video for Evian Christ's 'Ultra.'" The tweet received over 150 likes in 10 days.

The post was quoted by X^[3] user @David_Rudnick on June 27th, who posted a video of Thiel edited into the Evian Christ music video, his shirt rippling in the wind. The post gathered over 400 likes in a week.

https://t.co/DsYdNpA4Qr pic.twitter.com/Intz7D07hW

— ཊལབསརངཧ (@David_Rudnick) June 27, 2025

The earliest known memetic use of the meme is a June 28th, 2025, post by X^[4] user @SinaHartung, who wrote, "doctors realizing patients can just become their own doctors now," gathering over 1,000 likes in six days.

doctors realizing patients can just become their own doctors now pic.twitter.com/RmwgZQAWy3

— Sina (@SinaHartung) June 28, 2025

Also on June 28th, X^[9] user @mns tweeted, "Thiel Wave very powerful, mimetically speaking," gathering over 100 likes in a week.

Spread

The meme continued to spread in late June and early July 2025, as seen in a June 28th, 2025, tweet by X^[5] user @goth600 tweeted a video of Peter Thiel with a wave crashing behind him. The caption on the post reads, "When all the glass containers have more microplastics than plastic containers," gathering over 3,000 likes in a week.

On June 29th, X^[6] user @burrytracker tweeted, "When the S&P just hit all-time highs but 60% of Americans are using Afterpay to buy groceries," gathering over 13,000 likes in five days.

Also on June 29th, X^[7] user @Jetskigrizzly tweeted a meme showing a wide-eyed Peter Thiel with a wave crashing behind him. The post read, "Stimulant maxxing with 3 cups of coffee, 36mg of Adderall, and a zyn just to say 'nothing from my end' on a zoom call," and gathered over 36,000 likes in five days.

On July 1st, 2025, X^[8] user @BoringBiz_ posted a meme showing Peter Thiel with a wave crashing behind him, gathering over 3,000 likes in three days on a post captioned, "Analysts realizing knowing a lot of excel shortcuts means absolutely nothing for a long term career in finance."

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References