About

You Know I Keep That Thang On Me, sometimes written as You Know I Keep That MF Thang On Me, refers to posts parodying gun culture by pairing the phrase with a person revealing something innocuous in their pocket instead of a gun.

Origin

On May 27th, 2014, YouTube account Best Vines posted a clip by Vine
user Coerenzo in which a man says "You know I keep that thang on me," appearing like he was going to pull out a gun before pulling out a college diploma from his pants.

Spread

The phrase began seeing more use in memes starting in late 2017. On September 1st, 2017, Twitter^[1] user @juckfohn posted an image of a man with a bottle of ranch dressing in his back pocket with the caption, gaining over 34,000 retweets and 88,000 likes (shown below, left). On November 21st, user @iucipur^[2] posted an example of the meme in which a man was holding hot sauce in a holster, gaining over 90 retweets and 260 likes (shown below, right).

The format continued to be popular through the remainder of the decade. On January 3rd, 2019, Twitter^[3] user @tyszal posted an example in which he was holding a small crocodile like a gun, gaining over 120 retweets and 1,600 likes (shown below, left). On May 21st, user @cottoncandaddy^[4] made the joke with a possum, gaining over 1,400 retweets and 9,000 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References