About

You Think You Can Hurt Me? refers to a storytime trend on TikTok parodying the You Think You Can Hurt My Feelings trend where users post a long on-screen caption summarizing a tragic event from a book, movie or other narrative property and claiming it's their own story, beginning with the phrase, "You think you can hurt me?" The trend, often set to the song "Changes" by Hayd, became popular throughout 2022.

Origin

In August 2020, a storytime trend known as "You Think You Can Hurt My Feelings?" became popular on TikTok, where users trauma dump traumatic personal stories over the song "Bulletproof" by La Roux beginning with the title phrase (compilation shown below).

On November 23rd, 2021, TikToker^[1] @crolyszn posted a video set to "Changes" by Hayd. On February 28th, 2022, TikToker^[2] @cherish.96 posted a video under the sound captioned, "You think you can hurt me?" followed by a description of an event from the book The Outsiders, garnering over 5.2 million views in eight months (shown below). It is unclear if this is the first video to parody the former trend, but is the earliest known video to do so.

Spread

The trend continued to spread over the course of the year, largely under the same original sound (but not exclusively), which inspired over 22,000 videos by October 2022. On July 22nd, TikToker^[3] @camerondiaztwin posted a version of the trend using plot points from Gilmore Girls, garnering over 16 million views in three months (shown below, left). On September 21st, TikToker^[4] @_swerovski_ posted a version of the meme using a scene from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, garnering over 5.9 million views in a month (shown below, right).

On September 22nd, TikToker^[5] @localbrowntwink posted a version of the meme using the plot from Hereditary, garnering over 6.5 million views in two months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References