Jesse, What the Fuck Are You Talking About

About

Jesse, What the Fuck Are You Talking About refers to a series of memes imaging conversations between Breaking Bad characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, with Jesse using modern internet slang and Walter not understanding it and asking what he is talking about.

Origin

On July 17th, 2011, episode one "Box Cutter" of season four of the American TV series Breaking Bad premiered.^[1] In one scene of the episode, the main characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are dining at Denny's and discussing their plans (shown below, left). On October 11th, 2019, crime thriller El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie premiered^[2] (scene shown below, right). In a flashback scene, Walter and Jesse are dining together at a restaurant, discussing food, their plans and lives.

On March 13th, 2020, iFunny^[3] user CosmicRewind posted a Based on What? meme based on the latter scene. In the multi-panel meme, Jesse attempts to explain what "based" means to Walter, with him not understanding it and asking Jesse to explain himself (shown below).

Spread

The meme did not see further spread until on April 6th, 2020, Twitter^[4] user @garfpoop posted a Mommy GF / Return to Tradition meme utilizing the format, gaining over 860 retweets and 5,400 likes in two months (original author unknown; shown below, left). On April 8th, 2020, Twitter^[5] user @ohip13 posted a Joker / Doomer / Blackpill recaption of the meme which received over 2,400 retweets and 15,100 likes in two months (shown below, right). April 10th reposts of the meme by iFunny user Penns^[6] and Gxbe^[7] received over 3,600 and 4,000 smiles, respectively.

In the following weeks, the format gained a notable presence on Twitter, Facebook, iFunny and other social media, with Twitter posts mostly utilizing the clip from El Camino in contrast with the other platforms. For example, on April 13th Instagram^[8] user bearboob posted a meme which received over 37,600 likes in two months. On April 17th Twitter^[9] user @sunbodied posted a meme which received over 380 retweets and 1,300 likes in one month.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References