[Tough Guy Finger Snapping]

Submission 26,366

About

[Tough Guy Finger Snapping] is an image macro series featuring a still from the 1961 musical drama film West Side Story captioned with the caption "[Tough Guy Finger Snapping]."

Origin

On October 18th, 1961 the film West Side Story premiered in the United States.^[1] In the film's opening musical sequence, gangs announce themselves by snapping to the beat of the music (shown below).

The earliest known usage of the image with the subtitle was posted on the Blogspot^[7] waytoshy (shown below).

Spread

One of the earliest uses of the image online was as a reaction image and GIFs. On April 12th, 2013, DeviantArt ^[2] user Rai-Knightshade shared the image with the caption "Oh Snap!" Months later, on September 20th, GIPHY ^[3] featured a GIF of the moment (shown below, left and right, respectively).

Two years later, on December 2nd, 2015, MemeDroid user BetweenDreams shared the image with the subtitle "[Tough Guy Finger Snapping]" (shown below). They captioned the image, "The thug life chose them." Within five years, the image received more than 2,000 points (89% upvoted).

On April 8th, 2017, Tumblr ^[4] user starllex used the image with the subtitle "[Tough Guy Finger Snapping]" in response to another's opinion of chicken nuggets. The post received more than 307,000 notes in less than three years (shown below, left).

Two years later, on September 6th, Redditor ^[5] posted an image with a joke about Japan's Pearl Harbor attack on the United States. The post received more than 12,000 points (98% upvoted) and 90 comments in less than one week (shown below, center).

On September 8th, Redditor^[6] FaZe_Nibba shared another variation joking about white blood sells intimidating bacteria. The post received more than 39,000 points (98% upvoted) and 130 comments in two days (shown below, right).