About

Swipe Up To Make This Fly refers to a photo fad on Twitter in which people photoshop images such that they have a transparent background. They then instruct users to click the object and swipe up, which on mobile devices creates the illusion that the object is "soaring" through the Twitter timeline.

Origin

On April 3rd, 2015, Twitter user @lainadima uploaded the first version of the post, which included a cat, gaining over 5,600 retweets and 2,500 likes (shown below).

Spread

The post and its variations became quite popular over the coming days, as various other animals and objects were used in place of the cat. One of the most popular examples features Superman. Other people photoshopped images of themselves or their close friends (examples shown below).

The posts appeared more sparingly over the course of the following two years, until July 14th, 2017, when @joeltyler_ revitalized the meme with an image of Fiona the Baby Hippo. His post, shown below, gained over 12,000 retweets and 20,000 likes.

This sparked a surge of new posts using the format, prompting Select All^[1] to write an article instructing one on how to make the post in Preview for Mac:

Step 1: Select your image. (Preferably something you have the rights to. We here at Select All would never advise you illegally use someone else’s photo in the pursuit of fleeting internet fame.) Make sure to save it as a PNG file, otherwise you won’t be able to edit it properly later. Pro tip: Opting for something with a plain background, ideally white, will yield best results.

Step 2: Open your PNG file in Preview. Tap the toolbox icon at the top of the screen. The select the Instant Alpha tool by tapping the wand icon in the upper left-hand side of the screen. Click on the background of the image you want to remove, the Instant Alpha tool will begin to highlight in red. Once you’ve selected what you need to remove, hit Delete. You should be left with just the image you want to make fly.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References