Student rolls her eyes behind politician during TV debate, goes super viral

Eye-roll. On. Point.

In this day and age, you don't need a place in a TV-debate to get your point across. As long as you make sure you're in shot when a famous politician is making a statement, you can let your facial expressions do the talking.

Internet famous #PlaidShirtGuy managed to derail an entire televised Trump rally by making faces at the camera behind the president (before he was kindly but firmly removed from the shot.) And #PlaidShirtGuy just got a UK counterpart. Meet eye-roll girl.

21-year-old student Harriet Ellis was in the audience of a televised Brexit debate on Monday on Channel 4, when she delivered an on point eye-roll at former leader of the right-wing populist party UKIP, Nigel Farage. Her facial expression struck something of a chord among people on social media.

And of course, the excellent eye-roll spread across the Twittersphere like wildfire. "It's really strange to go viral," Ellis, who studies Classics at the University of Birmingham, told Mashable. "A guy came up to me after the show and asked if I'd checked my phone because apparently I was all over Twitter!"

Ellis confirmed her own identity on Twitter with a gif of her viral eye-roll moment.

At the moment of the eye-roll, Farage was claiming that the Prime Minister's Brexit plan was a so-called “Remainer’s Brexit,” meaning a Brexit deal on Remain terms.

"I completely disagreed with what he was saying," Ellis told Mashable. "It wasn't planned at all, it was honestly just an automated knee jerk reaction to what he was saying."

Ellis said that most of the reactions she's received after going viral have been positive.

"99 percent of people have been really nice, which has been great," Ellis said. "Some people have been negative, but to be honest, if they want to spend their Monday evening being mean to a 21-year-old girl online, then let them have their fun."

Ellis is pretty modest about her internet fame so far, though.

Same, tbh.

Topics Politics

Mashable Potato

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