About

I Smell Like Beef refers to a viral video of a young girl, Ava Ryan, repeating the phrase, "I smell like beef." The video was uploaded in May 2014 and became one of the best-known Vine videos, inspiring parodies and memes over the following years.

Origin

On May 30th, 2014, Katie Ryan posted a video to Vine^[1] of her daughter Ava repeating the phrase, "I smell like beef." The Vine gained over 15 million loops (shown below).

Spread

On November 7th, 2014, Katie Ryan posted the full clip to YouTube,^[2] garnering over 11 million views in nine years (shown below). This clip was posted to /r/videos^[3] on the 8th and gained 3,000 upvotes. The following day, it was covered by The Huffington Post.^[4]

The video quickly became one of the more well-known Vines. It was included in Twitter^[5] user @isafrias_' 2017 thread of classic Vines, gaining over 1,500 retweets and 4,100 likes in six years (shown below). Prior to this, it was included in a Buzzfeed^[6] list of Vines from Ava. Additionally, it was parodied in various remixes, memes and animations on YouTube. For example, on May 31st, 2019, YouTuber^[7] starface uploaded an animation that gained over 800,000 views in four years (shown below).

Other remixes take the clip and make it intentionally creepy and unnerving (examples shown below).

I Smell Like Beef Backstory

On July 16th, 2023, Katie Ryan uploaded a video to TikTok^[8] of Ava explaining the backstory behind the video, garnering over 13 million views in two months (shown below). In the video, she explains that her grandpa was making steaks and she realized the meat was still a little pink. She then looked at the sunset and thought it resembled the color of the beef. She then explains that she had the remnants of beef smell on her from the cooking and started saying, "I smell like beef." She then says it was a "poetic thing to say." At the end of the video, she advertises a limited run of "I smell like beef" merchandise.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References