How Did The Rock Raising His Eyebrow Become A Massive Meme Trend? The Rock's Facial Expression Explained

Over the past few years, The Rock has been a consistent force in memes, seeming to always have a new one every couple months, while one big one kept being used. His classic eyebrow raise in which he tilts his head slightly and raises just one eyebrow well above the other has consistently remained in use for various different memes, from Reaction Images to Jumpscares.

But where did his signature look come from, and how did it get so popular that people are photoshopping eyebrows on pictures of Cats?

Where Does the "Eyebrow Raise" Come From?

Before being seen as an actor appearing in multiple movies a year, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson was a Wrestler, and his eyebrow raise was simply part of his whole persona. When it comes to professional wrestling, each person involved usually has a gimmick or persona that they embody while performing, and The Rock's persona involved him having a particular eyebrow move in most of his promotional pictures.

How Did It Become A Meme?

When The Rock started appearing on TikTok, his classic eyebrow raise became an instant hit, with several of his 2021 TikToks of him doing the eyebrow as a response to people receiving millions of likes and tens of millions of views. This also coincided with the thinking emoji's gaining popularity, which caused his Eyebrow raise to be used as a replacement for it in Zoomer Humor.

The Eyebrow's Usage In Memes

As part of reaction videos, the Eyebrow Raise sees consistent use in calling the content being reacted to Sus, meaning it is suspicious and seems inappropriate for what is being shown. This leads to content being a combination of innocent and heavily edited things with the intent of creating a video version of Drakeposting. This also led to people photoshopping eyebrow raises on pictures of cats to imitate The Rock's iconic look.

For the full history of The Rock's eyebrow raise, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for even more information.