And Then The Whole Bus Clapped

Confirmed 179,473

About

"And then the whole bus clapped" ("the entire train applauded", "everyone stood up and cheered", etc.) is a phrase associated with stories posted online, typically on Tumblr or Facebook, in which the teller or another person allegedly gains admiration of the surrounding public, usually after defending someone from social injustice. The line is often considered a giveaway sign of a fabricated story, or used sarcastically to express doubt or disbelief, similarly to and often together with "X's name? Albert Einstein!"

Origin

Exact origins of this phrase are unclear. According to Urban Dictionary, a similar phrase, "and the bus driver stood up and started clapping", originated from Poland.^[1] The earliest known example of a story featuring applauding bus passengers was posted on July 28th, 2012 by reddit user Robert_Hoduin^[2] The post, entitled "The Bus Knight", gained over 21,306 points (97% upvoted) and 1439 comments. In the comments it was claimed to have been posted the day before on Facebook.^[9]

Spread

On May 18th, 2013, Facebook user Ricky Ghansah posted a story of his alleged encounter with a racist on a bus in Helsinki, in which he claimed to have received a round of applause after making the racist appologise aloud.^[4] This was later reported in several Finnish publications, such as the pro-minorities blog Migrant Tales^[5] and the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.^[6] Some people doubted the validity of Ghansah's story, alluding to similarities between it and the earlier Bus Knight story.

In June 2015, Tumblr blog andthewholebusclapped^[7] was launched, which collected various Tumblr posts containing stories that appeared fake, usually adding sarcastic "and everyone clapped"-type comments to the reblogs.