Homeless Bodyguards

About

Homeless Bodyguards, also known as Homeless Protectors, refers to a series of anecdotes and memes about homeless people defending those who give them money and food from harm. Spawned by a viral greentext in 2021 and later supported by a story posted on X / Twitter, memes based on the premise achieved popularity on TikTok and other platforms in 2023.

Origin

On August 27th, 2021, an anonymous 4chan^[1] user posted a greentext story about a homeless man in a thread on the /r9k/ board. The greentext recounted an incident where a group of homeless man protected the narrator from muggers in gratitude for him regularly buying them sandwiches and coffee. On that day, Redditor XYoshiaipomX posted a screenshot of the story to the /r/greentext^[2] subreddit, where it gained over 99,600 upvotes in two years.

Spread

The post was reuploaded on Reddit, X and other platforms numerous times in the following years. On September 17th. 2022, X^[3] user @c0wbitch shared a similar anecdote, writing about a homeless man in Austin who protected her car from being scratched. The post (shown below) received over 45,400 reposts and 800,000 likes in one year (shown below).

In February 2023, the stories inspired a meme format on TikTok as users posted video caption memes about homeless people protecting those who give them food and money. On February 10th, 2023, TikTok^[4] user @bantaman69 posted the earliest found meme about the trope, which gained over 73,000 views and 8,000 likes in seven months (shown below, left). On February 14th, TikTok user @walterwhite posted a version that received over 2.4 million views and 489,000 likes in the same period (shown below, right). On February 16th, TikTok^[5] user jxstjosh0 posted a video caption meme that earned over 218,000 likes in the same period (shown below, right)

The meme saw further mutation as the premise "me getting jumped at McDonalds" was combined with other punchlines about unexpected protectors. For example, on February 10th, 2023, TikTok^[6] user @preposterous__ posted a meme about crows coming to their defense that received over 4 million views and 782,000 likes in seven months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References