The 'yikes, unfollowing now' meme imagines fictional characters' cancellable backgrounds
It's a fact of being online. At some point, you'll realize a person you followed — maybe for some innocuous joke years ago, or a random video they just posted — has a sketchy background. Then you've got to unfollow and disengage.
And sure, that's an experience that's part and parcel with being online, but it's also kind of telling. The online world moves so fast that you people literally feel the need to tweet things like "oops didn't mean to retweet that problematic person" to wash their hands clean. Yes, it's impossible to background check every person you follow and yes, sometimes people also somehow miss how someone is clearly Not Good. And it's kind of hilarious to see people flip from "I like this person" to "nope nope nope" in an instant.
People ran with the idea online and, of course, turned it into a meme. It became a copypasta where folks on Twitter would post something like "Yikes. Unfollowing Now. Had no idea..." and then, typically, fill in the rest with some sort of fictional character.
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The meme is a close cousin of the recent meme about softblocking people. The unfollow version is now everywhere with just about every kind of pop culture reference you could imagine.
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In the few days since the meme took off, it feels like everything and everyone has been unfollowed. It's become a test of your culture, historical, and political knowledge at this point. Go ahead and search "unfollowing now" on Twitter and be tested on how many you can decipher.
Topics Memes
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You'll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
