Nervous / Horny / Death Grip

Submission 40,485

Part of a series on Reaction Images. [View Related Entries]

About

Nervous Grip, also known as Horny Grip or Death Grip, refers to a reaction image of a sweating, stressed character sitting down and clawing at their leg so hard that it's bleeding. The caption "death grip" is attached to the original image. The meme is used to illustrate the feeling of struggling to hold back an extreme emotional reaction. The word "death" is often replaced with another word to alter the context through caption changing, the most popular variations being "horny grip" and "nervous grip." It was first used in 2018 on Tumblr and saw a resurgence in 2021.

Origin

On January 8th, 2018, Know Your Meme^[1] user Wimbleflat uploaded a now-deleted post made on the same date by Tumblr^[2] user meropischao criticizing Tumblr artist RCDart for drawing a gender-swapped version of Star Wars character Finn in a racist way, using the "death grip" meme as a reaction (shown below). The post gained over 11,000 notes in three years and is available via a reblog by Tumblr^[3] user mydogisabutt. This is the earliest available use of the image.

Spread

The image became a popular reaction over the following years and spread to additional platforms. The character is often photoshopped and the word "death" changed to fit the context of the reaction content. On October 28th, 2019, Twitter^[5] user @rekka236 posted a version of the meme placing the stressed emoji over the character's face (shown below, left). On January 2nd, 2020, Tumblr^[6] user cactuscryptid posted a version of the meme replacing "death" with "scared" (shown below, right).

On January 5th, 2020, Twitter^[4] user @fightu4anapple made a post thirsting over a My Chemical Romance music video, using an altered version of the image with the word "horny" in place of "death" (shown below). This is not the original image using the caption "horny," with the earliest appearing in a tweet comment by Twitter^[7] user @sushisalmon95 on August 21st, 2018.

On February 4th, 2021, Tumblr^[8] user sloppystyle posted a meme using the death grip variation about nail-biters resisting the urge to touch their face during the COVID-19 pandemic, gaining over 30,000 notes in seven months (shown below).