About

What's the Word? What's the Haps? What's Your Major? refers to a scene from Adventure Time in which the worm character Shelby turns into a nerd. The audio of the scene became a meme on TikTok in 2023, in which creators reanimated the scene, portraying their character as a nerd once Shelby says, "What's your major?" Animations of the scene often referenced the Nerd Emoji.

Origin

On April 2nd, 2016, season 8, episode 2 of Adventure Time titled "Don't Look" aired on Cartoon Network. ^[1] The episode centers on the character Finn whose eyes get cursed, turning everything he looks at into what he internally envisions them as. In one scene, the character Shelby enters the frame and says, "What's the word? What's the haps?" and then, "What's your major?" as he turns into a nerd (YouTube^[2] upload shown below).

Currently, the first known usage of the scene in a memetic context was an animation posted by TikToker^[2] @jerrysmithfanatic on October 13th, 2023, who related the audio to "how i think i look when talking about my interests" vs. "how i actually look." The video also referenced the Smiling Buck Tooth Emoji and the Nerd Emoji. Over 17 days, the video received roughly 982,700 plays and 227,600 likes (shown below).

Spread

Going into October 2023, various creators posted their animations or added captions to the original scene of Shelby. For instance, on October 18th, 2023, TikToker^[3] @coleyzwoleyzzzz captioned the scene, "me when someone mentions space," gaining roughly 183,200 plays and 18,300 likes in 12 days (shown below, left). On October 16th, TikToker^[4] @coff1nbats posted an animation, gaining roughly 519,200 plays and 128,000 likes in two weeks (shown below, right).

The animation trend later spread to YouTube, evident in a video posted by YouTuber^[5] SoggyLIVER on October 21st, 2023, gaining roughly 28,500 views and 1,200 likes in nine days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References