Ball Up Top 🚶🏿

Submission 3,127

Part of a series on Catchphrases. [View Related Entries]

About

Ball Up Top🚶🏿 is a slang expression and catchphrase inspired by pick-up basketball. In 2023, X (formerly Twitter) user @285Slim came to be associated with the phrase after using it repeatedly in his tweets. The phrase was also notably used by X user @kfmsr in a viral tweet in mid-September 2024. The new father used the phrase to announce that his newborn daughter was not his and that he was taking the news in stride. The expression came to be used to represent how men downplay their sorrows to cope with their mental health crises. "Ball Up Top" is used in a manner similar to Fuck It, We Ball, another basketball-inspired catchphrase.

Origin

According to Urban Dictionary^[8] user maximi, the phrase "Ball Up Top" corresponds to a basketball term where "the ball is returned to the top of the key and alerts players that the next point is starting." In popular slang, the phrase "ball up top" is thus used to indicate that someone is moving on from a temporary setback.

The earliest notable use of the phrase "Ball Up Top" was a September 19th, 2023 post by X^[7] user @285Slim, where he responded to a now-deleted tweet by writing, "I WANT some p****. You NEED the money. So save me the sob story and let’s run it. Ball up top." The post gathered over 17,000 likes in a year.

@285Slim went on to use the phrase "ball up top" in many of his subsequent tweets, to the point where people began to attribute the quote to him on X (formerly Twitter).

September 2024 'She Ain't Mine, Ball Up Top' Tweet

On July 16th, 2024, X^[1]^[2] user @kfmsr posted a photo of him holding his newborn daughter in the hospital alongside a caption that read, "Best moment of my life captured at the perfect time." Two months later on September 12th, he quoted the post and wrote, "She ain't mine. Ball up top🚶🏿." The post gathered an unknown number of likes before it was deleted.

On September 12th, various X users began posting screenshots from @kfmsr's account, showing him repeatedly tweeting about how excited he was to have a daughter and how well he was going to treat her. X^[3] user @dyingscribe made one such post with the caption, "Cold fucking world, dawg." The post gathered over 80,000 likes in three days.

Spread

In the following days, various internet users began posting memes and jokes about @kfmsr's use of the phrase "ball up top," including X^[4] user @2ndCaptainFly, who wrote, "'Ball up top' is a crazy phrase to tweet after the most traumatic thing in your life," on September 12th, 2024, gathering over 90,000 likes in three days.

On September 13th, X^[5] user @_TwoFootIn wrote, "Saying “Ball up top” when your world is crashing down is exactly why men don’t need therapy. A therapist would tell me to cry smh," gathering over 87,000 likes in two days.

On September 14th, X^[6] user @sleepyghostmp3 posted pixel art for the phrase "Ball Up Top," gathering over 1,000 likes in a day.