Muddy Workers Operating Machinery

Submission 6,790

Part of a series on Viral Videos. [View Related Entries]

About

Muddy Workers Operating Machinery is a viral video of two mud-covered oil rig workers operating a drill at a rig. Online, the video has been shared multiple times as an example of hard work and has been used in a variety of meme formats, including Working at X Is Harder Than This and A Pretty Good Litmus Test for Politics, among others. In June 2023, the video achieved virality as a video caption meme, being paired with the "This Is How It Feels to X" phrasal template.

Origin

On August 22nd, 2022, TikToker^[1] @oilfeildoutlaw posted a video of himself and another worker manually operating greasy machinery at an oil rig. The upload gathered over 45.4 million views and 2.2 million likes in a year (seen below).

On the same day, Twitter^[2] user @ElijahSchaffer reuploaded the video, writing, "Why aren’t we encouraging our girls to pursue jobs like this? We need true equality." The post (shown below) received over 38,800 retweets, 39,300 quote tweets and 229,100 likes in one year.

Spread

Since being posted, the video has been used as a part of several meme formats, primarily being used as source material for video captions and particularly on Twitter.

Working at X Is Harder Than This

In late August 2023, the video spawned the Working at X Is Harder Than This meme format in which users compared other occupations with the work performed in the video. On August 23rd, 2022, Twitter^[3] user @remy4real23 tweeted the video, captioning it "working at starbucks during the busiest hours is harder than this tbh." The tweet (shown below) received over 19,100 retweets and 275,200 likes, starting the format.

The format saw a resurgence online in June 2023 after a challenge tweet by user @beyoncegarden^[4] went viral on Twitter.

A Pretty Good Litmus Test for Politics

On November 18th, 2023, Twitter^[5] user @erichhartmann tweeted the video, writing, "This video is a pretty good litmus test for politics: do you regard these men with respect, or disgust?" The tweet (shown below) received over 1,700 retweets, 5,000 quote tweets and 16,600 likes and started the meme format in which users paired the caption with other imagery.

How It Feels to X

The video has been frequently paired with the How It Feels to X phrasal template, being used to humorously illustrate the difficulty of certain feats. For example, on June 20th, 2023, Twitter^[6] user @haterperson6714 quote tweeted the video with the caption "this how it feel tryna fullscreen on 123movies." The post (shown below) received over 21,600 retweets and 206,700 likes in six months.

This subformat saw a surge in popularity in June and July 2023 following a viral tweet.^[3]

Venus Slime Fields

Venus Slime Fields refers to a series of parody memes imagining the struggles of working at slime fields on Venus. The memes parody social media posts by right wing influencers which glamorize and praise blue collar work, especially the frequently shared Muddy Workers Operating Machinery video. The meme is closely related to the Zeep Glorp trend, from which it borrows "alien" lingo.