Angry Texas Fan / Grant Walther

Submission 42

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About

The Angry Texas Fan or Sad Texas Fan refers to a University of Texas at Austin student named Grant Walther who went viral in October 2024 when a screencap of him at a Texas Longhorns college football game went viral on social media in which he looked angry and sad. The Texas Fan meme predominantly centered on Walther's hair which was big and unusually shaped, according to internet users, similar to the Zoomer Perm or the hair of Conway Twitty. After going viral on Twitter / X and TikTok as a reaction image and meme, Walther was interviewed by news outlets like the Daily Mail.

Origin

On October 19th, 2024, the Texas Longhorns played the Georgia Bulldogs in college football.^[1] At one moment during the broadcast, a Texas Longhorns fan was shown in the crowd, seemingly angry or upset with the game's score. The first known upload of the fan's likeness was shared by the X^[2] account @nocontextcfb at around 11:21 pm EST on October 19th, gaining over 8,800 likes in five days (shown below).

Spread

Within minutes of the aforementioned post, others shared their own screencaps of the Texas Fan. For instance, later on October 19th, X^[3] user @PeteBlackburn tweeted a square-cropped version, captioned, "Just insane aura," amassing over 125,000 likes in five days (shown below).

In the following days, many quote retweeted the abovementioned post and went viral. For instance, on October 20th, X^[4] user @sentient_dorito posted a QRT, joking, "republican dna is real," gaining over 220,000 likes in four days (shown below).

On October 23rd, 2024, TikToker^[5] @longhornnation_ut posted a video of the Texas Fan realizing he'd gone viral while at the game. The video was reportedly from his friend's Instagram account.^[6]^[7] When reposted to TikTok, it received roughly 1.7 million plays and 209,700 likes in a day (shown below).

On October 23rd, the Texas Fan, aka Grant Walther, posted to his Instagram^[8] @grant.waltha about his virality, gaining over 3,500 likes in a day.

Interview

On October 23rd, 2024, the Daily Mail shared a clip of their interview with Grant Walther to TikTok,^[9] gaining over 1.2 million plays and 129,200 likes in a day (shown below).