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That Wine Guy
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About
That Wine Guy is an X / Twitter gimmick account that narrates a bizarre story of a person who loves red wine. Every tweet by the account usually contains the same heavily filtered picture of a smiling man sitting in his car paired with a stock image of red wine and usually utilizes multiple hashtags, most notably "#wine." The story, which had the man becoming gay and experiencing weird wine dreams, mostly ended after That Wine Guy sealed himself in a barrel to become wine himself.
Online History
On January 25th, 2021, X[1] / Twitter gimmick account That Wine Guyπ·(@thatwineguy68) posted its first tweet: a heavily filtered photograph of a smiling man (meant to be the account's persona) and a stock image of red wine being poured into a glass and a short message expressing love for red wine, a template that was followed in nearly all future posts shared by the account. The post (shown below) garnered over 160 reposts and 330 likes in three years.
In the following weeks, the persona continued to share posts[4][5] about his love for red wine, often including multiple inventive wine-themed hashtags in its posts (examples shown below, left and right).
On February 3rd, 2021, the account mentioned Melissa, the character's ex-wife, with That Wine Guy pondering if "women aren't for him" (shown below, left and right).[2][3] The second post garnered over 2,100 reposts and 7,300 likes in two years.
The Melissa story arc culminated on February 5th, 2023, as That Wine Guy came out as gay,[6]
with the post gaining over 40,000 reposts and 102,000 likes in three years (shown below). The post would inspire multiple parodies in the following years.
Also on February 5th, 2021, That Wine Guy reported[7] having weird wine dreams (post shown below, left), writing[8] that the dreams were feeling increasingly real several days later (post shown below, center). On February 9th, That Wine Guy wrote[9] that he himself needs to become wine (shown below, right).
On February 9th, 2021, That Wine Guy concluded his saga by announcing that his time had come and that he was sealing himself in his wine barrel to become wine.[10] The post (shown below) received over 5,500 reposts and 19,000 likes in three years.
On March 31st, 2023, artist Dream Puzzles posted an animated music video titled "Melissa: The End of ThatWineGuy68" on YouTube,[11] a tribute to the account (shown below).
Use in Memes
During the account's period of activity, the photograph was an occasional subject of fan art (examples shown below).
Staring in 2022, the "nothing better than a glass of #RedWine" tweet has been inspiring memes, with users replacing That Wine Guy or editing him to look like various characters and adjusting the caption accordingly. For example, on July 18th, 2022, X user @littlejungo replaced the photograph with the You Guys Ever Had Gay Thoughts? Lmao spam image of the character Gus Fring from Breaking Bad, with the post garnering over 2,100 reposts and 10,000 likes in two years (shown below, left).
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] X β @thatwineguy68
[2] X β @thatwineguy68
[3] X β @thatwineguy68
[4] X β @thatwineguy68
[5] X β @thatwineguy68
[6] X β @thatwineguy68
[7] X β @thatwineguy68
[8] X β @thatwineguy68
[9] X β @thatwineguy68
[10] X β @thatwineguy68
[11] YouTube β Melissa: The End of ThatWineGuy68
