Selener / Gotta Keep An Eye Out For Selener

About

Selener, also known as Gotta Keep An Eye Out For Selener, is a slang term and catchphrase that emerged from a 2012 song named "Beauty And A Beat" by Justin Beiber, featuring Nicki Minaj. The original phrase is sung by Nicki Minaj and the term "Selener" was used to refer to singer and actress Selena Gomez, who was rumored to be dating Beiber at the time. In the following years, the phrase entered stan and mainstream slang, often captioned alongside images of people with crooked eyes or strange facial expressions.

Origin

On October 12th, 2012, the official YouTube channel for Justin Beiber uploaded the music video for his track "Beauty And A Beat," featuring rapper Nicki Minaj. The video gathered over 1 billion plays in nearly a decade (seen below).^[1] At the 3:18-minute timestamp, Nicki Minaj says, "But I gotta keep an eye out for Selener" in reference to Selena Gomez, Beiber's then-girlfriend.^[2]

The word "Selener" was then added to Urban Dictionary^[3] on October 24th, 2012, where it was defined as "someone we gotta keep an eye out for." The post gathered over 1,200 likes in over a decade (seen below).

Spread

Over the following months and years, the term and expanded catchphrase were then used in various Facebook,^[4] Twitter^[5] and other social media posts. For example, on December 31st, 2013, Instagram^[6] page @miles_jai posted a photo of a person going cross-eyed alongside a caption that read, "keepin an eye out fer selener." The post gathered over 13,000 likes in over nine years (seen below).

On December 10th, 2019, Twitter^[7] user @triplevirghoe posted a photo of a British woman alongside the caption, "me in 2012 keeping an eye out for Selener." The post gathered over 70,000 likes in nearly three years (seen below).

Various Examples

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7107744037234314539

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7041424323508178182

Search Interest

External References