Videos of movie stars including Ryan Gosling and Robert Pattinson looking stoical in the face of bad news has emerged as one of the biggest meme trends on TikTok so far in 2023.
Thousands of people are joining in with the my honest reaction trend, either using gifs or clips of the actors or creating their own videos. The videos are usually either captioned "my honest reaction" or use the hashtag #myhonestreaction, which has had 260 million views on TikTok.
Many of the videos are set to the song Luxury by Azaelia Banks, which has been used in more than 32,000 videos.
The my honest reaction trend first started in 2022, with early examples like this YouTube video featuring Bob Odenkirk from Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad looking like he couldn't care less about was happening:
It took off on TikTok at the end of January, when people including @billy.mcg and @totalerbastert posted videos featuring Ryan Gosling (7 million views and 2.7 million views respectively) and @l0ki.ae posted a similar video featuring Robert Pattinson (1.6 million views).
The videos then inspired thousands of people to post their own deadpan reactions to situations that make them sad – like @jj.edii's parents not approving of his hair (3.1 million views) or @oliver_lyon only looking good at 3am (1.5 million views).
Other videos use often blurred images of the Hollywood stars, with people adding captions like "he's literally me" – @aespectacular (316,000 views) – or of them saying they look like famous people, like @cadenfoster_fit saying he looks like American Psycho character Patrick Bateman (1.8 million views) and @rodrigo.exp who's "literally" Ryan Gosling (1.3 million views).
Grand Prix driver Fernando Alonso is one of the famous faces joining the trend – using it in response to the caption "F1 drivers can't be good at TikTok" (5.3 million views).
The trend later evolved to cover everyday situations, such as @donut.king.belco (below) putting her supervisor badge back on after telling a customer it was her first day in the job, or @danieln.x56 from the point of view of him at 15 pretending he could drive his mum's car (515,000 views).
Spotting TikTok trends
The "my honest reaction" meme is just one of the new trends quickly picked up and tracked by our Buzz service, which highlights some of the big talking points emerging on TikTok and social media every day.
Buzz from Shooglebox is used by journalists, creators and brand teams who need to spot and stay on top of the latest trends.
This stack of cards for the my honest reaction meme gives you an idea of how you can use Shooglebox to create a read-only box of cards around a theme or trend and share it with others.
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