This Man, Fish React Him

About

This Man, Fish React Him refers to a series of memes popularized on Discord using the phrasal template "this man above me, X react him," "X" being a Discord Emoji, asking users to spam a user's message with "X." While the meme started as early as July 202, the most popular version of the meme features an image of Popeye and is captioned, "This man above me, fish react him" and went viral on TikTok in May 2023, further popularizing the trend.

Origin

The earliest known example of a "react him" meme was posted by Tenor^[1] user iron_man_1337 and uses a GIF of Thanos lifting his blade, captioned, "This man, nerd react him," likely referring to the Nerd Emoji (shown below).

Spread

GIFs using different variations of the same template became increasingly popular on Tenor^[2][3][4] that month, including examples like "crab react him" on August 4th, 2022, "penis react him" on August 5th and "🧐" react him on August 18th (examples shown below).

On October 26th, Twitter^[5] user @skitkattl posted an example of how the meme is used on Discord (shown below, left). On November 23rd, Redditor u/Swatbot69 posted an image macro of Popeye captioned, "This man above me, fish react him," to /r/memes,^[6] garnering over 60 upvotes in nine months. On May 8th, 2023, Instagram^[7] user dankest_crusader posted a screenshot of a Discord interaction where the "fish react" meme is used on someone, garnering around 200 likes in three months. It was reposted to iFunny^[8] on May 9th, garnering over 11,000 smiles in the same span of time.

On May 30th, TikToker^[9] @lightfootactor posted a video recreating the "fish react" meme, garnering over 823,000 views in just over two months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References