Pet the X / PETTHE Emotes

About

Pet the X is an exploitable meme in which a subject is petted by a disembodied hand from the original Mmmm Myes Pet Froge GIF. In mid 2020, the hand was used in a series of Twitch GIF emotes called PETTHE emotes. Subsequently, the hand was used in wholesome videos showing sad characters becoming happy after being petted by the hand.

Origin

In 2019 to 2020, a trend called frogposting took off on Instagram, spreading to other social media platforms. As a result, on February 18th, content creator DitzyFlama posted a sped-up GIF of a person petting a frog to his Twitter feed (shown below).^[2] The post gained over 14,600 likes and retweets within seven months. This GIF was repurposed and reuploaded by many users, starting the Mmmm Myes Pet Froge meme, and shortly after, PETTHE Emotes on Twitch.

rt to pet frog pic.twitter.com/GscGQBGWtU

— Ditzy 🖤 (@DitzyFlama) February 18, 2020

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PETTHE Emotes

The Mmmm Myes Pet Froge GIF inspired an exploitable series of Twitch emotes where the frog is replaced by various subjects. On May 16th, 2020, user of the Twitch emote extension BetterTTV (BTTV) flammel_xd created two emotes in the PETTHE format. The first was PETTHEPEEPO^[1] featuring the peepoHappy emote (shown below, left) and the second was PETTHECUTIE^[2] with the BTTV emote AYAYA. Six weeks after being posting, PETTHEPEEPO was used on over 3,300 Twitch channels,^[1] making it the most successful PETTHE variant.

Following PETTHEPEEPO, people began creating PETTHE emotes in response to various Twitch streamers accepting new channel emotes. On May 23rd, BTTV user ayyybubu uploaded a variant called “PETTHEMANLET” with Twitch streamer Nymn being petted.^[3] On the 27th, Twitch streamer GreekGodx uploaded “PETTHEGREKLER” to BTTV for his channel.^[4] On May 28th, BTTV user senboni uploaded “PETTHESCHNOZER” which showed the nose of streamer xQc’s being petted.^[5] Senboni submitted it to xQc’s subreddit on the same day and it received almost 3,000 upvotes within a month.^[6] xQc accepted the emote the next day.^[7]

As of June 28th, 2020, over 400 PETTHE emotes have been uploaded to BTTV.^[8]

Pet The X Videos

After the success of PETTHE emotes in May to June 2020, people began using the hand from DitzyFlama's frog petting GIF in wholesome videos in a similar manner to the Polar Bear GIF. The hand is frequently used in videos showing images of sad characters becoming happy after the hand pets them. In some instances, the hand doesn't pet the character at all, instead bait and switching the audience by performing an unexpected and often violent action. These memes are commonly set to Ending Theme from Super Mario World.^[9]

On July 26th, YouTuber manwel super^[10] uploaded a video titled "pet the doge" to his YouTube page. The video depicts a Shiba Inu losing his cowboy hat, causing him to cry. The same disembodied hand from DitzyFlama's frog petting GIF flies onto the screen and pets the dog, making him happy (shown below). The video is set to a MixAndMash remix of Jack Stauber's song Buttercup.^[11] It garnered over 920,000 views and 83,000 likes in under two months.

On July 27th, 2020, Instagram user nitro.if^[12] uploaded a video captioned, "Me @ my homies when they're sad." The video features the same disembodied hand from manwel super's video petting a sad Peepo, who starts smiling and glowing as the hand pets him. On the same day, nitro.if uploaded the video to their YouTube page,^[13] gaining over 1.6 million views and 157,000 likes in under two months (shown below). This video set the trend of using Ending Theme from Super Mario World as background music.

On August 19th, YouTuber SilentManJoe uploaded a video titled PET THE SPY to his YouTube channel.^[14] In this video, it appears as if a disembodied hand is going to pet the Spy from Team Fortress 2. Instead, the hand crushes the Spy, resulting in a splatter of blood (shown below). The video garnered over 375,000 views in under one month. It is the first instance of a bait and switch Pet the X variant, where something unexpected happens instead of or after the petting.

On September 12th, YouTuber bearbubb^[15] uploaded PET THE RED to his YouTube channel, continuing the less wholesome bait and switch trend. In this video, a red crewmate from Among Us is sliced in half after being pet. The video gained over 197,000 views in four days. Users continue to make both wholesome and bait and switch variants of the meme.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References