Tucker Carlson Looking at the Camera

Submission 4,529

Part of a series on Tucker Carlson Vladimir Putin Interview. [View Related Entries]

About

Tucker Carlson Looking at the Camera, also known as Tucker Carlson Fourth Wall Break, refers to a moment during the Tucker Carlson Vladimir Putin Interview in which Tucker Carlson looked at the camera in a slightly confused manner, furrowed his eyebrows and seemingly smirked at the viewer after Russian President Vladimir Putin told him that he "would like to share a very interesting story" with him. A two-image meme format and GIF of the moment spread in memes on Twitter / X and elsewhere in February 2024. Many captions added to the template referenced Putin's history lesson, also known as Putin Starting Way Back.

Origin

On February 8th, 2024, Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin on X.^[1] The roughly two-hour interview received over 140.1 million views and 833,000 likes in less than a day (shown below). At the video's 21:14-minute mark, Putin tells Carlson, "I would like to share a very interesting story with you." Carlson then looks into the camera, furrows his eyebrow and appears to wryly smile at the viewer.

At approximately 6:45 p.m. EST on February 8th, 2024, X^[2] user @reshetz shared two screencaps from the moment with one showing Carlson before looking at the camera and the other showing his smirking expression. @reshetz captioned the images, "LMAO," receiving over 13,000 likes in less than a day (shown below).

Spread

Others on X started to use the two-image meme template soon after. For instance, on February 8th, 2024, X^[3] user @sranysovok used the images minutes after @reshetz, captioning them, "If only you you knew how banan things really are," gaining over 390 likes in less than a day (shown below, left).

During the same timeframe on February 8th, X^[4] user @GravitysRa1nbow quoted @reshetz with a POV caption, reading, "POV: You just realized Putin wasn’t actually doing a bit this whole time," receiving roughly 30,000 likes in less than a day (shown below, right).

The Tucker Carlson Looking at the Camera images were then exploited by meme creators, such as X^[5] user @sranysovok on February 8th, 2024, who turned the images into a Computer Reaction Face, gaining over 170 likes in less than a day (shown below, left).

X^[6] user @sranysovok posted another exploited version of the meme on February 8th, gaining over 90 likes in the same timeframe (shown below, right).

Usage of the image also spread to 4chan, such as a thread started on /pol/ ^[7] on February 8th (shown below, left). A greentext using the images was shared by X^[8] user @sranysovok on February 8th (from a currently unknown board), gaining over 300 likes in less than a day (shown below, right).