It Was Me, Barry! / Zoomposting

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About

"It Was Me, Barry!," also known as Zoomposting, refers to a series of memes, including video edits and text posts, parodying a line of dialogue spoken to DC Comics superhero Flash by villain Zoom in the Flash: Rebirth comic series where Zoom reveals that he's the source of numerous bad things that have happened in Flash's life. The joke began on 4chan in 2010, rising in popularity over the next decade.

Origin

Between April 2009 and February 2010, DC Comics published a six-issue series of comics titled Flash: Rebirth. At one point in the story, Eobard Thawne, also known as Zoom or Reverse-Flash, reveals to Flash that he was responsible for just about every terrible thing that's ever happened to Flash throughout his life, including killing his mother (examples shown below, via Imgur).^[1]

On February 8th, 2010, an anonymous user of 4chan's /co/ board made a text post referencing and parodying the scene, offering the earliest known parody of it (shown below). The link to the post has since been lost.

Posts parodying the scene grew in popularity over the following years, imagining a variety of negative things Zoom could have done to Flash. On June 27th, 2014, an anonymous user of 4chan's^[2] /co/ board made a thread titled "Zoom is a dick," posting a parody of the line immediately and inspiring a number of other users to do the same. On December 6th, Redditor u/pump_dragon posted a screenshot consisting of various posts from the thread to /r/FlashTV,^[3] garnering over 250 upvotes in six years (shown below).

Spread

On December 21st, 2014, Redditor u/dbasinge posted "IT WAS ME BARRY" to /r/FlashTV^[4] along with a GIF of a man beating a dead horse labeled "IT WAS ME BARRY, I BEAT THE DEAD HORSE" implying the joke was dead, garnering over 600 upvotes in six years (shown below).

On June 14th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @viewtifulval posted a video showing an image of Zoom from the animated film Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox along with a voice-over saying, "Remember when you were making out with your first girlfriend and you came right as she touched your leg? It was me, Barry. I jerked you off at super speed so it would seem like you nutted at just a woman's touch" (shown below). The post gained over 33,700 likes and 13,000 retweets in 10 months.

On June 17th, YouTuber^[6] kingozebras posted a video syncing @viewtifulval's audio clip with a scene of Zoom speaking from Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, garnering over 1.2 million views in 10 months (shown below, left). On July 12th, YouTuber^[7] Radical Larry uploaded a video reading a number of parodies of the phrase, garnering over 170,000 views in nine months (shown below, right).

On March 12th, 2021, Redditor u/lion_OBrian posted an image of Zoom to /r/TwoBestFriendsPlay^[8] along with text claiming Zoom ended Super Best Friends Play, garnering over 1,900 upvotes in under a month (shown below).