About

Polar Bear In Arlington Texas is a catchphrase and series of memes based on a viral X / Twitter post sharing a photo of a polar bear standing in the street at night captioned, "What da hell is a polar bear doin in Arlington Texas😭😭." The post was made in February 2022 and garnered viral spread over the following years as an image macro, inspiring further memes and photoshops. The phrases "polar bear in Arlington" and "What da hell is a polar bear doing in Arlington Texas" also began to see use as a catchphrase, used to describe something that is out of place in a given context.

Origin

On January 2nd, 2020, visit^[1] reported that a polar bear was killed outside of Longyearbyen, Norway. The county commissioner explained why they euthanized the bear, quoted as saying, "The polar bear was not euthanized because of an emergency, but because it has shown unusual behavior in the last few days by attacking the settlement in Longyearbyen and thus creating a danger for people in the town." The report includes a photo of the polar bear standing in the street.

On February 2nd, 2022, X^[2] user @strawmuncher reposted the photo of the polar bear, writing, "What da hell is a polor bear doin in Arlington texas 😭😭😭," garnering over 281,000 likes and 26,000 reposts in two years.

Spread

The post went viral, inspiring memes and reactions online and garnering further viral spread over the following years. On February 7th, 2022, Cheezburger^[3] published a collection of reactions to the post. On December 18th, Instagram^[4] user real.nba.quotes posted a meme using the polar bear post as a way of pointing out someone who doesn't fit into a crowd of people, garnering over 19,500 likes in two years.

On June 19th, 2024, the mlbcut4 Instagram^[5] page posted a version of the meme, garnering over 120,000 likes in five months. On September 5th, Instagram^[6] page countrycentral posted a version of the meme about The Backstreet Boys' inclusion at the Stagecoach 2025 country music festival, garnering over 10,000 likes in two months.

On September 7th, u/Xxdeadmeme-69-xX made a post to /r/splatoon^[7] sharing a photoshop of the polar bear as a Goldie, writing, "Having Goldies in normal rounds is insane," garnering over 800 upvotes in two months.

On October 20th, X^[8] user @CookedByRiley0 quote-reposted a user sharing the logos of all the teams they hope make it to the NBA 2025 Playoffs Conference finals, writing, "There’s a ginormous polar bear in Arlington Texas on this," garnering over 19,000 likes in two weeks.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References