About

Thanks, I Hate It is a slang phrase used online with regards to posts that the poster deems unattractive or superfluous. After being used in comments, it became used to title various shitposts and strange images.

Origin

While the origin of the phrase is unclear, its usage saw a spike in the fall of 2017 on sites Reddit and Tumblr. It was popularly used in comments responding to strange images before it was used to title such posts. For example, a September 24th, 2017 post in /r/FireEmblemHeroes^[1] showed a picture of Fire Emblem character Ryoma drawn to make his skin fit the shape of his helmet (shown below). User Luxocell commented "Thanks! I hate it" in the thread a month later.

Spread

The phrase began seeing use in post titles in late 2017 and early 2018. For example, a post from October 30th, 2017 showing a cat with a hat on with the title (shown below). A post on /r/crappydesign from January 18th, 2018 with the title "Thanks I hate it" gained over 30 upvotes (shown below, right).

On Tumblr, the phrase is most often used in tags for posts. One popular post by mygoldenwolf used the phrase with an image macro of Shane Madej, gaining over 100,000 notes (shown below, left). Another post with the tag by user lessos gained showing Pokémon fan art gained over 6,000 notes (shown below, right).

TIHI Subreddit

In December 2019, the TIHT^[2] subreddit was launched to catalog uncomfortable posts. As posted in the rules, "the naming scheme must start with "Thanks, I hate …" For example, on March 7th Redditor ibeatobesity^[4] posted an image of reverse centaurs (shown below). The image gained 6,900 points (97% upvoted) in a day.

On February 28th, 2019, Heather Dockray posted article to Mashable^[3] about the subreddit and quoting Mark, the r/TIHI founder, in saying:

"The initial idea came from another moderator of us (u/scrumbly) on another post on r/ATBGE three months ago. He posted a comment linking to this sub and as it didn't exist yet I decided to make it a thing. I wanted to create a place for all the beautiful posts that are both likable and hatable at the same time. But I wasn't all that serious about it, as all subs I managed before were very small as well."

As of March 7th, 2019, r/TIHI has gained 166,000 subscribers.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References