Oppa Homeless Style

About

Oppa Homeless Style refers to a viral That Happened text post that appears to be from Tumblr sharing an allegedly true story about the OP trying to give $20 to a homeless man only to have a third party referred to as "dipshit" take the money from the man's hand and shove it back in OPs face, insisting they deserve it more. The story ends with the homeless man performing a "pitch-perfect Korean style dance" and yelling "oppa homeless style!" at the third party, inspiring the crowd surrounding them to dance and the dipshit to run off. The unknown origin of the text post, due to the usernames being censored, sparked an investigation by the Heritage Posts Tumblr page to find the origins of it and determine whether or not the story is real, all but confirming in January 2021 that the post is fake.

Origin

On March 14th, 2014, an Imgur^[1] user posted a screenshot of a Tumblr text post that begins "I had a good day of tips waitressing for once, so I gave a homeless man $20 on the walk home." The story then continues with a description of how OP gave $20 to the homeless man and a third party, referred to as Dipshit, came over and snatched it from their hand so forcefully it drew blood. He shoves it in OPs face and says "No. NO. You worked for this money while he sat on his ass and jerked off. YOU KEEP IT." OP argues with the man that they can do what they want with their money and Dipshit compares the "hard-working" New York homeless people to the man in the story. After Dipshit says his parents give him money, meaning he doesn't need to work, the homeless man gets up and says, "You want a dance, you little prick?" then does a "pitch-perfect Korean style dance," saying "oppa homeless style" and inspiring a crowd around them to dance along. Dipshit turns bright purple and runs off into the night (shown below, click to expand). The uploader, MechaMew2, posted the story to Reddit's^[2] /r/thatHappened board that day, a board meant for sharing stories that seem fake, titled "Fedora'd villain shames woman for giving to the homeless," gaining over 3,500 upvotes in seven years.

Spread

Heritage Posts Investigation

On September 16th, 2020, Tumblr^[3] page heritageposts started an "oppa homeless style investigation" post, meant to find the origin of the post and whether or not it's real. The post shares the Imgur and Reddit origin links and discusses how the post may be fake due to the appearance of the tags looking like an original post rather than a reblog, like the screenshotted post is, but this could be explained by a browser plugin called "Missing E." They also DM'd the original Reddit poster, MechaMew2, who said they think they found it on 4chan somewhere, suggesting it may be fake and was never posted to Tumblr at all. The investigation post gained over 21,800 notes in a year (shown below).

On January 18th, 2021, Heritageposts posted an update to Tumblr^[4] about the investigation, revealing that the Redditor MechaMew2 is a frequent poster to /r/ThatHappened and has posted numerous fake Tumblr text posts to the board over the years, all but confirming that the post is fake and created by MechaMew2. MechaMew2 also regularly posted fake Tumblr posts to /r/fatlogic in posts joking about fat people, as well as memes about Donald Trump meant to trigger liberals. They conclude the post and investigation with this paragraph:

so yes… i think we must finally accept that oppa homeless style was never a real tumblr post. oppa homeless style was made by a redditor whose passion in life is to make fake screenshots of fake tumblr stories for fake internet points. as connoisseur of fake tumblr story i expected to be devastated by this news, but really it has only made oppa homeless style even funnier

On February 27th, 2021, YouTuber Sarah Z. posted an hour-long video about the post, discussing how it's fake, gaining over 868,000 views in nine months (shown below).

On February 27th, 2021, Tumblr^[5] user alter-of-fish posted an Always Has Been meme referencing the post and the fact that MechaMew2 made Trump-themed memes, gaining over 2,200 notes in nine months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References