Bitch What The Fuck

About

Bitch What The Fuck, or Bitch WTF, is an exclamatory phrase used to express confusion, shock and often disapproval towards something or someone. The phrase has inspired a number of memes, including a viral 2014 Vine that inspired numerous video edits, and countless reaction images.

Origin

It's unknown who first used the phrase "bitch what the fuck" online, with searches for the phrase going back to 2004 according to Google Trends^[3] (as far back as data is available), with a slight rise starting around 2010.

Vine

The first significant use of the phrase online was on December 24th, 2014, when Vine^[1] user enjajaja posted a video in which she screams it at a television screen showing men with their shirts off running around a house (shown below, reuploaded to YouTube).^[2] The Vine gained over 3 million loops and 26,000 revines before the platform was closed.

The video gained significant attention on Vine and through reuploads to YouTube and other social media sites, as well as through Vine compilations. The audio of enjajaja screaming inspired a number of edits,^[4][5] where the audio clip is spliced over various video clips to comedically express shock and confusion towards them (examples shown below, left and right, from 2015 and 2016 respectively).

Spread

"Bitch What The Fuck" Glasses

In 2017, an image of a Black woman wearing sunglasses reflecting an image of her computer screen displaying a message reading, "BITCH WHAT THE FUCK" (shown below) began circulating as a reaction image on Twitter, used to show shock, confusion and disapproval. For example, on April 26th, 2017, Twitter^[6] user @Fernandojg3 used the image in reaction to a post reading, "i love my girlfriend even if shes a gemini 😻," garnering over 4,900 likes in four years.

On the same day, Tumblr^[7] user shasta-brah posted an image macro using the image, garnering over 1,300 notes in four years (shown below). On July 27th, Twitter^[8] user @ziwe tweeted, "my reaction to every direct quote from scaramucci" along with the image, garnering over 6,600 likes and 900 retweets in a comparable span of time.

The image has continued to see significant use as a reaction image since 2017, particularly on Twitter and Tumblr^[9] (examples from Tumblr shown below, left). On April 6th, 2020, Redditor u/Early-Corgi0 posted the image to /r/tumblr^[10] under a screenshot describing a strange dream from a Tumblr post, garnering over 2,000 upvotes in a year (shown below, right).

Further Use In Reaction Images

The phrase is commonly photoshopped onto various images and used as a reaction image in the same way as the "bitch what the fuck" glasses format (examples shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References