Tom Scott "I Am At X"
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About
Tom Scott "I Am At X" (or "I am just outside X") is a catchphrase by the YouTuber Tom Scott introducing places as part of his "Amazing Places" series. In the fall of 2020, the catchphrase was parodied in a series of image macro parodies which featured Scott in front of bizarre places.
Origin
The earliest parody of Scott's content was posted to YouTube on July 27th, 2020 by user Chris Spargo. The video is a compilation of Scott introducing numerous locations using his catchphrase, gaining over 52,000 views (shown below).
Spread
On October 11th, 2020, Twitter user @MatttGFX[1] posted a parody in which Scott introduces a location from Minecraft, gaining over 11,000 retweets and 100,000 likes (shown below, left). Over the following several days, multiple variations were posted to social media, particularly Reddit. For example, on October 13th, 2020, a variation posted to /r/okbuddyretard[2] by user ow333n gained over 7,700 points (shown below, right).
In fact, the popularity of Scott on /r/okbuddyretard got to the point where members are predicting the meme being banned. This led to meta variations about Scott being banned on the subreddit (shown below).
Various Examples
Templates
Tom's Reaction
Tom Scott posted a Twitter thread detailing how he felt about the meme but later deleted the thread. Below is a screenshot of said thread.
![Tom Scott O @tomscott In the last few days, there's been a trend of kids photoshopping me into video games. It's uncomfortable for me: l'd prefer it wasn't a thing. But I know it's meant in good faith, it's likely legal under fair use, and I made similar things when I was young. Here's the odd thing: 12:30 PM · Oct 13, 2020 · TweetDeck 342 Retweets 53 Quote Tweets 2.2K Likes Tom Scott O @tomscott · 43m Replying to @tomscott was actually planning to do a video in Minecraft a couple of months ago. It would have been about publicity stunts, media fact-checking, and how a good story can often have a great impact even if it's not true. The video failed because of the players. 27 24 Tom Scott O @tomscott · 43m The Minecraft world in question was set up by a charity -I won't name them for obvious reasons. So l got a copy of Minecraft, set a screen recorder going, and joined the server. 15 seconds after I connected, the first racial slur appeared in the server chat. 2] 40 933 Tom Scott O @tomscott · 43m I spent about 45 minutes connected, and I saw every stereotype about unsupervised kids on video games, every cliché about what happens when you give anonymity and an audience to people with undeveloped empathy. All on this charity's server, which they claimed was "moderated". 5 27 27 944 Tom Scott O @tomscott · 43m I can't ignore that. I can't point people to a server where that's happening. So the whole video fell apart. I did ask the charity about it, and they said – rather brusquely – that they had a limited budget and couldn't be expected to moderate their server all the time. 3 27 16 848 Tom Scott O @tomscott · 43m Which raises the question: why do they still have the server? Well, I'd guess most of the people writing about it won't have bothered to log in, so it continues to be a good source of publicity for them. Which would have worked perfectly for my story, but I couldn't use it. 3 27 12 821 Tom Scott O @tomscott · 42m So no, I'm not making anything about video games soon, and that's also why being co-opted by the kids who play them feels uncomfortable. I don't want to be even tangentially associated with that. If you're a parent, make sure you keep an eye on what your kids are playing. O 48 27 27 1.1K Tom Scott O @tomscott · 18m Just to be absolutely clear: I'm not writing off video games. I was on a charity Among Us stream yesterday, it was fun. But I am writing off that unmoderated, meme-based, gamer-adjacent culture, and trying to avoid the perception of even being _remotely_ connected to it. 32 2] 38 O 631](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/914/501/67e.png "Tom Scott's reaction to \"I Am At X\" memes")
Search Interest
External References
[2] Reddit – funny red shirt brit
Top Comments
Mrsupersonic8
Oct 13, 2020 at 01:01AM EDT
AL2009man
Oct 13, 2020 at 06:41PM EDT in reply to