Bruh

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About

"Bruh" is a popular variant of the slang term "bro" that is often used as an interjection to convey frustration or disappointment at something. Online, the term is frequently iterated in the forms of text comments and reaction images, as well as Vine remixes in which various subjects are shown fainting or falling over to the ground.

Origin

"Bruh" has been used as an alternative way of saying "bro," an informal term of address for "brother," since the mid-to-late 2000s, around the same time or shortly after the word "bro" entered colloquial usage in American-English vernacular. On December 19th, 2003, the first Urban Dictionary entry for "bruh" was submitted by LudwigVan.^[1]

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Reaction Image

The first known usage of "bruh" in reaction images comes from an image macro based on a photograph of NBA professional basketball player John Wall slouched on the benchside with a blank stare. While the image macro's exact place and time of origin remains unclear, some of the earliest instances were posted to MemeCrunch^[4] and Reddit^[5] on August 12th and November 11th, 2013, respectively. In September 2015^[13], John Wall identified the source image as a photograph of him zoning out in frustration while slouched on the benchside out of injury during one of the Washington Wizard's early matches against the Atlanta Hawks in the 2012-2013 season.

Vine Remixes

On May 1st, 2014, Viner CallHimBzar^[7] posted a video of former high school basketball star Tony Farmer momentarily collapsing in court after being sentenced to three years of prison term for robbery, kidnapping and assaulting his girlfriend, accompanied by a dubbed voiceover clip of his friend and fellow Viner Headgraphix saying "Bruh." In the first five months, the video received over 440,000 plays and 5,600 likes.

That week, other Viners began posting video clips with the hashtag #BruhMovement, featuring Farmer and other subjects collapsing with the "Bruh" audio clip playing in the background. On May 3rd, YouTuber Cortland Garner uploaded a video titled "The Bruh Movement Compilation," including notable #BruhMovement Vines (shown below). In the first five months, the video gained more than 460,000 views and 420 comments.

[This video has been removed]

On the following day, Headgraphix collaborated with hip hop artists Lil Homie Twon and Dillybeatz to release a track titled "Bruh" (shown below).

On June 25th, YouTuber Watch Vine uploaded a compilation of Bruh Vine clips, followed by another montage by YouTuber Vine Machine on July 6th. In three months, the videos gained upwards of 950,000 and 615,000 views respectively. The videos have since been unavailable, with the Watch Vine YouTube channel becoming closed and the Vine Machine channel ending up terminated due to multiple copyright complaints. On July 24th, the men's interest blog Brobible^[3] published an article about the Vine video fad, which highlighted several notable examples from the series.