About

Thank You For Coming to My TED Talk is a phrasal meme popular on Tumblr made after one makes an esoteric point, parodying the popular TED Talks series.

Origin

Meme Documentation ^[1] traces the origin of the meme to the BBC Sherlock fandom. On May 28th, 2015, Tumblr beysuspng^[2] reblogged a post of theirs that read "LISTEN UP: john and sherlock" with the phrase "Thanks for coming to my TED talk." The post gained over 1,100 notes (shown below).

Spread

Over the course of the following two years, the phrase "Thanks for coming to my TED talk" remained within the Sherlock fandom. However, it began expanding outside of the fandom and used for other, more esoteric statements in mid-2017. On May 26th, 2017, Tumblr user sexhaver^[3] used a variant of the phrase in a text post that read:

shirts, socks, underwear, and shorts are the “meat” of an outfit because you feed them to the washing machine after one use. jeans, jackets, scarves, and some hats are cartilage because you use them a few times before washing them. shoes, belts, and jewelry are bones because the washing machine cant digest them. this concludes my TED Talk

The post gained over 63,000 notes (shown below, left). On July 18th, 2017, user miniwrecks^[4] posted a point about Game of Thrones fandom vs. Doctor Who and Sherlock, gaining over 30,000 notes (shown below, right).

Following the spread outside of the Sherlock fandom in the summer of 2017, the meme began seeing use in a variety of popular text posts throughout the site by the fall of that year. For example, a post by kramergate^[5] on "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" from October 19th gained over 57,000 notes (shown below, left). A September 24th, 2017 post by foresstfox^[6] about Shrek gained over 60,000 notes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References