I Wasn't Quite Sure What I'd Seen But I Knew It Was Time For Me To Leave

Submission 5,621

About

"I Wasn't Quite Sure What I'd Seen But I Knew It Was Time For Me To Leave" is a memorable quote uttered by documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux on the docuseries Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends. Online, people use the quote, along with a photo of Theroux from another episode, to express the desire for escape due to confusion.

Origin

On October 23rd, 2000, the episode of Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends entitled "Looking for Love" aired.^[1] In the episode, Theroux observes a shotgun Thai wedding between a British man and a Thai woman. At the end of the hotel room ceremony, he says, "I wasn't quite sure what'd seen, but I knew it was time for me to leave."

Eight years later, on March 3rd, 2008, the YouTube account BBC Studios published the clip. The post received more than 600,000 views in 13 years (shown below).

The image commonly associated with the image comes from an episode of the television docuseries Michael Moore's TV Nation.^[2] The episode, "Klan PR Makeover," aired on July 26th, 1994 (shown below).

Spread

On June 4th, 2015, Tumblr ^[3] user vital-dust posted the earliest known usage of the image and quote in a meme. The post received more than 9,400 notes in less than six years (shown below, left).

Over the next five years, the image would see continued use on various social media sites. For example, on May 26th, 2016, Twitter^[4] user @izzyredd tweeted the image with the caption, "#edexcelmaths looking at the last question." The post received more than 1,000 likes and 580 retweets in less than five years (shown below, center).

On September 25th, 2017, BuzzFeed ^[5] included the image on the post "This Is A Post For Everyone Who Has A Thing For Louis Theroux."

The image macro has also appeared on fan-made merchandise, such as t-shirts^[6] (example below, right).