What I Saw At The Party

Submission 6,838

Part of a series on Catchphrases. [View Related Entries]

About

What I Saw At The Party refers to a catchphrase used in image macro captions that often reads, "You saw me at the party but didn't say, 'Hi' / What I saw at the party:" The phrase is often paired with images that allude to extreme inebriation, where the subject of the meme was "too messed up" to notice the other at a party. It was first used on Twitter in late 2018 and took off in usage across other platforms like Instagram in 2019.

Origin

On September 25th, 2018, Twitter^[1] user @astrologerlink (who went by @linkon_foley at the time of posting) tweeted a blurry image of lights at night with the caption, "'You saw me at the party and didn’t say hi' / What I saw at the party:” The tweet (shown below) received roughly 89,000 likes over the course of three years.

Spread

The above tweet was screenshotted and shared to Instagram^[2] on October 1st, 2018, by the account @thetastelessgentlemen where it received roughly 69,800 likes over three years' time.

On October 2nd, 2018, the first known variant of the catchphrase was posted to Twitter^[3] by user @FridaKmusic. In the tweet (shown below, left) she simply captioned a black background. It received 24 likes after being posted. Other Twitter users joined the trend around the same time. For instance, @that_trent_guy^[4] used the catchphrase on October 3rd, pairing it with an image that read, "Somone I don't like" (shown below, right). His tweet received 20 likes.

Notably, in late 2019, the trend took off in Instagram meme circles. The first creator on the platform to create an original meme was @shitheadsteve,^[5] who posted his on December 19th, 2019. The meme (shown below) used a picture of a blurry cat and received roughly 51,300 likes over two years time.

The trend took off in abundance after its resurgence on Instagram. Meme creators started captioning things like Bladee album covers^[6] going into 2020. Towards the end of 2020, it was used in video memes, like one (shown below) reposted by the account @traprapping^[7] on November 17th, 2020. The video vaguely followed the aesthetics of Schizowave and received 21,600 likes over one year. Overall, the trend started leaning on themes already established by Shizoposting.