About

*Starts Beatboxing* refers to a parody meme format in which images of people and characters covering their mouths while crying or in surprise are intentionally misinterpreted as if they are beatboxing due to the similarity of the gesture. In 2020, a WikiHow image depicting a man crying near his dying partner gained popularity as the Please Stop Beatboxing redraw format.

Origin

On June 24th, 2014, Tumblr^[1] user batou posted a photograph of Pope Francis and Italian president Sergio Mattarella leaving a car, with Mattarella covering his mouth and the Pope extending his arms as if performing a hip-hop dance move, with batou writing, "damn the pope about to preach some sick verses." Three other Tumblr users responded with additional jokes, with Tumblr^[2] user evilspice joking that Mattarella is beatboxing in the photograph. The post (shown below) gained over 255,200 likes and reblogs in six years, with the screenshots of the post being widely circulated in the following years.

On February 12th, 2020, Redditor QueenHotdawg used an image from the WikiHow^[4] article "How to Say Goodbye," from its section "Saying Goodbye Forever," in which a man is crying next to his dying partner and is covering his mouth in grief. QueenHotdawg titled the image "How to not look disgusted when your terminally ill wife shits herself," with the post gaining over 10,900 upvotes in /r/DisneyVacation^[3] subreddit in six months (post shown below, left). The image was originally uploaded to WikiHow^[5] on May 22nd, 2017.

Later, on February 12th, 2020, Twitter^[6] user @unsanctifi3d tweeted the image, writing, "Richard. Richard I'm dying. Please stop beatboxing." The post received over 870 retweets and 3,300 likes in one year (shown below, right).

Spread

On August 13th, 2020, Redditor lSerlu posted a similar meme (shown below, left), with their post gaining over 200 upvotes in /r/disneyvacation.^[7] On April 14th, 2020, Twitter^[8] user @NudeEskimo tweeted the image, writing, "Keven I'm dying. Please stop beatboxing." The tweet (shown below, center) received over 44,300 retweets and 202,000 likes in two days. On August 17th, Instagram^[9] account Sonny5ideup posted the meme, changing "Keven" to "Kevin" and gaining over 41,900 upvotes in eight months (shown below, right).

Starting on August 15th, 2020, the WikiHow image became source material for redraw memes, with the earliest found redraw posted by Twitter^[10] user @applesaughce on that day (shown below, left). Also on August 15th, Twitter^[11] user @littlechirons posted a still image of character Edward Cullen from Twilight captioned "*starts beatboxing*" that gained over 68,300 retweets and 255,100 likes in eight months (shown below, right).

Following the viral spread of @littlechirons' tweet, the caption "*starts beatboxing*" gained popularity when used in combination with various images of people and characters covering their mouths when crying. For example, on August 30th, 2020, Twitter^[12] user @killukin posted a Hunter x Hunter meme that gained over 2,600 retweets and 8,400 likes in nine months (shown below, left). On September 9th, @littlechirons tweeted^[13] a Midsommar meme that gained over 26,000 retweets and 118,300 likes in the same period(shown below, right).

In late 2020 and in 2021, the phrase "*starts beatboxing*" caption saw active use online as a caption, while the WikiHow image maintaining popularity as a redraw format.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References