Turn Up the Volume

About

Turn Up the Volume is an image of popular Vine, Twitter, and Instagram personality Jay Versace crying with headphones on while pumping his fist in the air. The image grew popular as a parody of emotional reactions to music in the fall of 2016, as Twitter users paired the image with song lyrics and a motion-blurred picture of a volume knob being turned up. It's name has been an issue of dispute among researchers and social media users.

Origin

On May 13th, 2016, Versace tweeted^[1] his excitement about the release of the latest album from hip-hop artist Chance the Rapper with four pictures of him emotionally listening to music in his headphones (shown below). The tweet gained over 710 retweets and 1,200 likes. The first picture went on to be used in Twitter memes later that year.

Spread

The first known usage of the image as a meme came on November 3rd, 2016, when Twitter user @hayleydotsonn^[2] used it in reference to popular Rae Sremmurd song "Black Beatles" (shown below). Her tweet gained over 8,300 retweets and 14,000 favorites.

Over the next two days, the tweet was copied by popular meme accounts such as WORLDSTARHIPHOP^[3] and life of a blonde.^[4] This spike caused variations in which users replaced the lyrics to "Black Beatles" with different, oftentimes ostensibly unfashionable lyrics (i.e. theme songs from children's shows). These spread through Twitter throughout the rest of 2016.

On November 20th, Versace acknowledged that he had become a meme in a tweet.^[5] On December 5th, 2016, a question asking about the name of the meme appeared on /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[6]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References