About

Purple Plate is a forced meme related to the Kirk Franklin 'How I Feel Being On X' meme, which is about sharking fake Nichetok meme trends as if they're real to feign superiority over others for being more attuned to the modern meme trends. The meme was popularized on TikTok in mid-September 2025 by TikToker @joey1025100, inspiring further memes that attempt to gaslight people into believing the meme is bigger than it really is.

Origin

On September 17th, 2025, TikToker^[1] @joey1025100 posted a version of the "How I Feel Being On X" meme reading, "How I feel being on purple plate when everyone else is on 'Fa Mulan,'" garnering over 950,000 views in two days. This is the earliest known reference to the purple plate meme.

Prior to this, the purple plate meme did not exist. The Kirk Franklin meme is a reference to and a joke about TikTok's "NicheTok" meme community and is meant by the poster to ironically put forward an air of superiority over being into the most niche meme possible, while everyone else is still obsessing over the "Fa Mulan" meme.

Spread

Memes referencing "purple plate" in a similar manner, treating it as if it's a viral meme format, continued to appear on TikTok over the following days.

For example, on September 18th, 2025, TikToker^[2] @ilad6741 posted a video simply consisting of an image of a stack of purple paper plates over a beat, garnering over 92,000 views in a day.

Later that day, TikToker^[3] @clypsdayly posted a ranking of the top niche memes, placing the Purple Plate meme in the "6-7" spot, garnering over 244,000 views in a day.

Various Examples

Related Memes

Kirk Franklin Eating an Apple

Kirk Franklin Eating an Apple, also known as How It Feels To Be On X While My Class Is On Y, refers to an exploitable TikTok meme featuring a video of American musician Kirk Franklin wearing a pair of glasses and a dark blue shirt, looking smug while eating an apple. While the meme was initially used to joke about people acting smug or superior over minor achievements, in September 2025, the video came to be used to joke about being ahead of the curve when it comes to internet meme trends, especially among the NicheTok community. Some examples of such memes include, "How it feels to be on Тотя while my friends are on W Speed."

NicheTok

TikTok Niche Community, also known as NicheTok, refers to a TikTok aesthetic and culture that consists of stylized meme compilations and shitposts that reference multiple fandoms, subcultures and memes specific to TikTok, in that, in order to fully understand or appreciate the videos, one would need a "niche" literacy of TikTok trends and its algorithm. The term "NicheTok" was coined in 2022, and existed as the twin trend of TikTok's Corecore, among other "-core" suffix trends on the app, like Pinkcore. So-called "NicheTokers" used sped-up remixes and nightcore music as their TikTok sounds, as well as sad slideshow audios that romanticized depression and loneliness. Initial NicheTok videos built on the aesthetic foundations of YouTube Poop.

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External References