Sarah Paulson In Bed / Sally Joins Twitter

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About

Sarah Paulson In Bed, also known as Sally Joins Twitter, refers to a memorable scene from the fifth season of the horror drama television series American Horror Story in which the character Sally is lying in bed while scrolling through her phone. Starting in 2016, the scene gained popularity as a captioned GIF format on Twitter.

Origin

On January 13th, 2016, episode 12 of season five of the anthology television series American Horror Story television series, titled "Be Our Guest," premiered.^[1] In one scene of the episode, the character Sally, who is portrayed by American actress Sarah Paulson, receives a smartphone as a gift to connect with people on social media, joining Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. She is shown posting several videos, tweets and images throughout her day, and in one particular moment, she is lying in bed scrolling through social media. The full scene was posted on YouTube^[2] by user @leatherandlace5710 on February 17th, 2018. The video (scene shown below) garnered 378,000 views and 8,300 likes in five years.

The clip's first use as a meme is unknown, but numerous examples appeared on Twitter on January 14th, 2016, the day after the episode aired, typically as still images from the scene. One of the earliest known examples comes from Twitter^[3] user @rahn_stahp625, whose tweet celebrated the season's final episode using an image of Sarah Paulson lying in bed. The post (shown below) garnered 9 likes in seven years.

Spread

In the following years, GIF versions of the scene were posted on Twitter and Tenor, maintaining its popularity as a reaction meme. For example, a July 29th, 2021 post by Tenor^[4] user iggyrem used a GIF of Paulson's scene lying in bed (shown below, left). A September 19th, 2022 post by Twitter^[5] user @Caro__dactyl__ received over 13,500 likes and 2,200 retweets in one year (shown below, right).

In late September 2022, the format regained popularity on TikTok^[6] in the form of video edits. For example, on January 18th, 2023, user @the_meme_stream uploaded the scene with an overlay text meme format, which garnered 27,000 plays and 1,900 likes in six months.