Will Smith With a Camera

Submission 28,052

Part of a series on Bel-Air (Fresh Prince). [View Related Entries]

About

Will Smith With a Camera, or Will Smith in a Cab, refers to a still image from the opening of American TV series Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in which main character Will Smith looks out of a taxi window with a camera in his hand. Online, the image has been circulated as a reaction image, often in reference to situations in which a person sees something that was predicted or expected.

Origin

On September 10th, 1990, the pilot episode "The Fresh Prince Project" of American TV series Fresh Prince of Bel-Air premiered in the United States.^[1] In the opening intro of the episode, main protagonist Will Smith, portrayed by actor Will Smith, is shown riding a taxi cab to Bel-Air, California. In one shot of the intro, Smith excitedly peeks out of the cab window with a camera in his hand.

Spread

Online, a still image based on the scene has seen use as a reaction image at least since July 2014. On July 30th, 2014, Twitter user @_fkcn__ posted the earliest known instance of a meme based on the image.^[2] It is unconfirmed whether @_fkcn__ was the original author of the meme. A virtually identical tweet posted by user @cameerroonnn on August 6th, 2014, gained 38 retweets and 57 likes in five years.^[3]

In the following years, the images saw limited use as an image macro. For example, on April 11, 2016, Facebook community Soy el Abogado del Diablo posted a meme based on the image which gained over 600 likes and 150 shares in three years.^[4]

On May 6th, 2016, Twitter user @alexissrenae made a now-deleted post based on the image (repost by user @FactsOrDie shown below).^[5]^[6] In the following days, Tumblr user kingvaris reposted the image, gaining over 11,800 likes and reblogs in three years.^[7] On May 11th, 2016, Reddit user stephtodeath posted the image to /r/BlackPeopleTwitter subreddit, where it gained over 17,800 upvotes in three years.^[8]

Starting in 2018, the image gained popularity as a reaction, used in the same vein as Bender's Neat reaction image. For example, on September 5th, 2018, Redditor Mciscool200 posted the image to /r/dankmemes subreddit, gaining over 45,700 upvotes in six months.^[9]