Popular Loner

About

Popular Loner is a catchphrase and cultural axiom used by people to describe their personality types and social lives. The term grew in popularity in part due to a longer quote from Twitter that reads a variation of, "I am a popular loner, they all know me, but no one knows me," or, "I'm a popular loner, I know a lot of people and a lot of people know me, but my circle is small and I'm usually by myself." The term grew in popularity on Twitter after several internet users sincerely used it to describe themselves, but the phrase has since come to be described as corny and pejorative.

Origin

On December 7th, 2016, Twitter^[1] user @kingkleffy posted a tweet that gathered 90 likes and 39 retweets in six years since it's upload (seen below).

On February 27th, 2018, Twitter^[2] user posted the earliest viral tweet using the phrase "popular loner," and gathered over 200,000 likes and over 80,000 retweets in four years (seen below).

Spread

On March 14th, 2019, rapper Rod Wave uploaded the music video to his song "Popular Loner" to YouTube.^[3] The video has gathered over 56 million views and over 350,000 likes in nearly three years since its upload (seen below).

The term continued to grow in popularity, featuring in various viral tweets and being used in I'm 14 and This Is Deep style images in coming years.

On January 4th, 2020, Twitter^[4] user @MODE279 posted a tweet of a person in a BAPE hoodie, mocking the popular loner trope. The tweet gathered over 20,000 likes and over 4,000 retweets in nearly two years (seen below).

On July 1st 2021, TikToker^[5] @willuzi posted a video mocking the popular loner trope, gathering over 2.3 million views and over 500,000 likes in nearly a year (seen below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References