About

Unexpected Me / What I Thought refers to a series of TikTok videos in which TikTokers express their or their families' expectations and then reveal the reality of the situation usually though implementing the "morph" editing feature. The videos which became popular in January 2020, typically feature the songs "It Will Rain" by Bruno Mars^[2] followed by "Scared" by Jeremy Zucker.^[3]

Origin

On January 1st, 2020, TikToker @jordan.samm used @spenceraitken's^[1] sound clip "unexpected me" to create a video in which he shows photos of what his parents thought he'd look like and then a photo of himself (shown below). The video gained over 655,800 likes in 23 days.

Precursor

Prior to the emergence of the Unexpected Me / What I Thought series, the multi-perspective trope in observational humor has been iterated through other template-based memes like Expectation vs. Reality "What I Watched vs. What I Expected vs. What I Got" (2007), "What You Think You Look Like vs. What You Actually Look Like" (2008), “How People View Me After I Say I’m X” (2011), and "What People Think I Do vs. What I Really Do" (2012).

Spread

On January 2nd, 2020, TikToker @anthonycerv uploaded a similar video that received over one million likes in 22 days (shown below, left). The next day, TikToker @poptarts4dinner also published a video about their parent's expectations and gained over 799,200 likes in 21 days (shown below, center). On January 5th, TikToker @heybales uploaded a video that illustrates a comparison between typical best friend photos compared to their own (shown below, right). The video accumulated over 836,400 likes in 19 days. Over the next few days, it became popular to feature pet photos in this format.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References