British People / Bri'ish

About

British People or British People Be Like is a series of memes making fun of British people and English accents and stereotypes.

Origin

Memes making fun of English accents likely have existed since the Internet began. One of the earliest available examples is a my face when copypasta from 4chan exaggerating English people's use of posh vocabulary (shown below).

However, the trend did not start in earnest until at least 2017. On July 24th, 2017, Twitter user @Z0YAHKHAN786 tweeted a joke mocking the use of posh vocabulary. The post received more than 11,000 likes and 4,000 retweets in less than three years (shown below, left).

The following year, on May 15th, 2018, a popular tweet from Twitter user D0GGEAUX using the phrase "Right, what's all this then" that was popularized received over 10,000 likes and 1,800 retweets (shown below, right).

Precursors

Memes making fun of British history have circulated on the subreddit /r/HistoryMemes since at least April 2017. On April 19th, 2017, Redditor^[1] xX_The_legend_27_Xx posted a Who Would Win? meme ridiculing Britain's role in the Suez Crisis (shown below). The British People Be Like meme is also preceded by the White People Be Like / Black People Be Like meme that exaggerates and parodies the behaviours of black and white people. Additionally, memes that similarly made fun of people's nationalities such as Balkan memes became popular sometime in April 2019.

Spread

On January 1st, 2019, Twitter user @brendandagawd tweeted, "British ppl be having sex like 'mmm yes splendid ah indeed scrumptious carry on.'" The tweet received more over 13,000 likes and 3,500 retweets in less than two years. Redditor fAkestTreemAkeSships later posted a screenshot of @brendandagawd's tweet on the /r/WhitePeopleTwitter^[2] subreddit on May 1st, where it received more than 10,000 upvotes. It was later paraphrased by Twitter user yung_butters on July 7th in a tweet^[3] that received over 400,000 likes and 100,000 retweets (shown below, right). @yung_butters' tweet was included in a list^[4] of British People tweets that Buzzfeed published on July 31st.

British People memes spread from that point. On August 25th, 2019, a featured British People meme from iFunny user VicRattlehead received 65,000 smiles (shown below, left). The Nobody: meme included a close-up of primitive Patrick Star from the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants to mock the British stereotype of poor dental hygiene. On December 24th, Twitter user @tvrtlx posted a British People Be Like tweet that gained over 31,000 likes and 8,000 retweets in less than one year (shown below, right).

On March 21st, 2020, a tweet from Twitter user @skintinty mocking British teen movies received more than 190,000 likes and 22,000 retweets (shown below, left). Another British People tweet posted on March 26th, 2020 by user @queersocialism earned over 700,000 likes and 100,000 retweets. @queersocialism’s post may have inspired a series of tweets mocking English accents from various users. On April 9th Buzzfeed published a list^[5] of British People tweets posted between March 26th and April 1st, each ranging from several hundred to several hundred thousand likes.

On April 1st, TikToker @ajwildflower posted a video laughing and reading British People tweets with an English accent, gaining more than 2 million views and 300,000 likes.^[6] An extended version was uploaded to YouTube by YouTuber DROLL on April 6th received over 250,000 views in just over two months (shown below, left), The video inspired some animators to animate the Tik Tok, such YouTuber Mika whose video posted on May 17th gained over 70,0000 views in under a month (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

References