About

Thank You, Random Citizen, also known as "And I Love You, Random Citizen" is a paraphrase of a memorable quote uttered by the character Metro Man in the 2010 animated superhero film Megamind. A screenshot of the character the line has been used as an expression of gratitude.

Origin

On October 28th, 2010, the film Megamind premiered in Russia.^[1] In the film, the character Metro Man (voiced by Brad Pitt) addresses a crowd of citizens. When one off-screen citizen expresses their gratitude, Metro Man responds, "And I love you, random citizen."

On November 15th, 2010, DreamworksTV uploaded the clip to YouTube, where it received more than 1.5 million views (shown below).

Spread

On February 20th, 2013, Imgur ^[2] user foreveralongtimelurker posted the image of Metro Man pointing with the caption "logging in to find a new message. i really do love you, random citizen." The post received more than 2,600 views in six years (shown below, left).

Over the next year, this variation of the meme continued to be used in response to positive affirmations in direct messages and message boards. For example, on March 10th, 2013, FunnyJunk ^[3] user Muppetz posted the image with the comment "and I like YOU random user" (shown below, right).

On March 14th, 2014, a template for the meme, entitled "And I Thank You, Random Citizen," was created on the website MemeGenerator.com. ^[4] As of May 2019, more than 190 posts were created using the template (example below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References