About

Sitting Alone In the VIP is a popular catchphrase and copypasta, commonly used in text posts and image macros, referencing a tweet by professional drag queen Kandy Muse in which she expresses sadness about sitting alone in the club. The phrase is associated with an image from a separate tweet showing Muse sitting alone at the club wearing sunglasses and was popularized throughout 2020 in the drag community online.

Origin

On June 18th, 2018, professional drag queen Kandy Muse tweeted^[1] an image of herself sitting alone in a club wearing sunglasses, hands folded, under the caption, "literally me at the club" garnering over 920 likes and 150 retweets in roughly two years (shown below).

Later that year on September 8th, Muse made a post to Twitter^[2] and said, "I’m at this gig right now alone and everyone has wanted a photo with me but no one has asked how my day was, so I’m just sitting here in vip all alone, feeling alone. this industry really is a lonely one huh." The tweet gained over 2,500 likes and 340 retweets in roughly two years.

On November 7th, Twitter^[3] user @overdramatica uploaded an image of Lady Gaga sitting alone on a couch captioned, "Sitting alone in VIP what a legend" (shown below). This is one of the earliest instances of the phrase used along with an image of someone sitting alone. On February 8th, 2019, Twitter^[4] user @ShamPayne8 then uploaded an extended version of the phrase over another photo of someone sitting alone, repeating the trend (shown below, right).

Spread

On October 12th, 2019, professional drag queen and Twitter^[6] user @ramonaslick uploaded an image of herself sitting alone looking somber captioned with, "Sitting alone in VIP" (shown below). This is the first image of a drag queen recreating Muse's photo and referencing her 2018 tweets.

On December 6th, 2019, professional drag queen Aquaria tweeted^[5] a photo of herself sitting in the corner of what appears to be a basement, mimicking Muse's photo, under the caption, "I’m just sitting here in vip all alone" garnering over 11,000 likes and 600 retweets in two months (shown below, left).

On December 16th, Muse then responded with a tweet^[7] and said, "I am no longer sitting in VIP alone," alongside a photo of herself sitting in VIP with drag queen Aquaria, garnering over 2,000 likes and 150 retweets in roughly a year (shown below, right).

On December 31st, musician, drag queen and Instagram^[8] user Alaska Thunderfuck posted an image of herself sitting with her hands folded, alone, captioned, "Also this image of me sitting alone in the VIP," garnering over 127,000 likes in roughly one year (shown below). This significantly helped boost the trend. Muse tweeted^[9] a screenshot of the post later that day, writing, "sitting alone in VIP is a movement."

On January 1st, 2020, drag queen and Instagram^[10] user Trixie Mattel uploaded an image of himself without drag sitting alone in the club using the exact text from Muse's original tweet as the caption, garnering over 65,000 likes in a year (shown below, left). On January 27th, Twitter^[11] user and drag queen Brooklyn Lynn Hytes posted an image following the trend, garnering over 2,000 likes and 100 retweets in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).

The trend continued throughout the year, with drag queens mimicking Muse's pose and referencing the post. In 2021, Kandy Muse appeared as a contestant on season 13 of the American competition series RuPaul's Drag Race, increasing interest in the trend. On February 20th that year, Reality Titbit^[13] posted an article about the trend.

"Sitting Alone In The VIP" Song

On September 4th, 2020, Alaska Thunderfuck and Kandy Muse released a song and music video to YouTube^[12] titled "Sitting Alone In The VIP" (shown below). The video gained over 268,000 views in five months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References