About

Spent All Last Night Crying About The Wage Gap (I'm 6'3" BTW) is the on-screen caption attached to a seemingly ironic October 2021 TikTok selfie video by user Justin Foster, making it seem as if Foster is only showing interest in the women's rights issue to attract the opposite sex. The video inspired a trend on the platform under its original sound, consisting of the song "Sextapes" by Deftones, where people use a variation of the phrase in on-screen captions, replacing "the wage gap" with another male or female interest or rights issue and either their own height in the parentheses or another unrelated fact about themselves.

Origin

On February 1st, 2021, Redditor 3_T_SCROAT posted an image to /r/SnapChad^[10] of a muscular man's shirtless mirror selfie with the on-screen caption "Legit cried thinking about the systemic oppression women face in the workforce," gaining over 2,500 upvotes in eight months (shown below). The image was posted to Tumblr^[11] on February 4th, gaining over 18,000 notes in a comparable span of time.

On October 4th, TikToker^[1] justin.foster posted a likely ironic selfie video where he lifts the camera while looking into it with the on-screen text "i really spent all last night throwing up and crying about the wage gap (I'm 6'3" btw)" as if he cares about the issue of the wage gap but more-so wants to share his height (shown below). The video gained over 1.3 million views in two days.

Spread

TikTokers began making parodies of the video the next day under Foster's original sound, which was used in over 13,000 videos by October 6th. The earliest parody video appears to have been uploaded by TikToker^[2] @neroman1217 on October 4th, gaining over 1.5 million views in two days (shown below). In the video he uses another women's rights issue in place of Foster's.

TikTokers continued to post parodies of the post. Male TikTokers used it to make fun of women's gender issues, while female TikTokers used it to tease men's interests or rights issues, adding an overtly sexual fact about themselves in the parentheses. On October 5th, TikTokers^[3][4] @futuremilf2222 and @caitygl posted videos like this, gaining over 5 million and 1.4 million views respectively in a day.

On the same day, TikToker^[6] @shesarrived posted a video following the trend with the caption "Just cried for 45 minutes because most girls don't know American Psycho is a satire (I'm a 34D btw)" gaining over 1.3 million views in a day (shown below). A screenshot of the TikTok was posted to Instagram^[7] page @grandmas.butt on October 6th, gaining over 48,000 likes in four hours.

Screenshots of several other videos following the trend gained notable success on Instagram,^[8][9] including an October 5th post by beam_me_up_softboi that gained over 41,000 likes in a day (shown below, left) and a post by sonny5ideup on the same day gaining over 25,000 likes in the same span of time (shown below, left and right).

The phrase also spread to Twitter. On October 6th, Twitter^[5] user @mistmie posted, "spent all night crying and throwing up because Valorant players have to go through so much in ranked games, dealing with throwers and boosted players. (i’m a sage main, 5’3, & have no gag reflex btw)" gaining over 270 likes in three hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

[Unavailable]

External References