You Know I Had to Do It to Em

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About

You Know I Had to Do It to Em is a photoshop meme based on a picture of Twitter user LuckyLuciano17k standing on a sidewalk wearing a light-colored shirt and shorts with the caption "You know I had to do it to em."

Origin

On September 2nd, 2014, Twitter user LuckyLuciano17k posted the photograph of himself with the caption "You know I had to do it to em" (shown below).^[1] Prior to the Twitter account becoming private on December 22nd, 2016, the tweet received more than 1,700 likes and 1,700 retweets.

Spread

The tweet remained relatively unknown until July 1st, 2016, when Twitter user @ExhelonWinter^[4] reposted the photo with a mock caption depicting @LuckyLuciano17k as a snobby hip hop fan (shown below).

On July 7th, Tumblr user zonecassette posted an ad for the candy M&M featuring an M&M version of the television host Dr. Phil standing with his arms crossed along with the caption "You know I had to do it to em," garnering more than 4,400 notes within six months (shown below, left). On July 26th, Tumblr user queenwhiskey reposted the original photograph.^[6] On December 5th, Tumblr user splooge-mcducc posted a photoshop of LuckyLuciano17k as the character Fred Flintstone from the cartoon The Flintstones (shown below, right). Within three weeks, the post gained over 18,000 notes.

On December 22nd, Tumblr user milkyboyhanzo posted a photoshop featuring the character Zenyatta from Overwatch (shown below, left). The following day, Tumblr user graffitidraws^[7] posted an illustration of the character Stingy from LazyTown based on the original LuckyLuciano17k photo (shown below, right).

The meme continued appearing in various iterations through October of 2017. On October 1st, Twitter user @lujgi posted a photoshop of the character as the twins from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, gaining over 8,400 retweets (shown below, left). The same day, Instagram meme maker adam.the.creator^[8] posted an image including Luciano in a "All the memes of September" collage (shown below, right).

Arrest

On July 29th, Lucky Luciano launched a GoFundMe^[9] campaign titled "Free Lucky Campaign," claiming that he was "arrested over BS" and needed money to pay for "legal costs, court fees, bail money" and a lawyer to sue the police officers who arrested him (shown below).

That day, a link to the GoFundMe was tweeted by @LuckyLucianoOG.^[12] In response to the tweet, Twitter user @ChungMoolah^[11] tweeted a screenshot of an arrest record with charges for possession of illicit substances (shown below).

Meanwhile, Lucky Luciano uploaded a video to his YouTube channel discussing his arrest (shown below).

The following day, Twitter user @queggsi^[10] tweeted out a screenshot of a now-deleted Instagram post showing Lucky Luciano's mugshot (shown below). The tweet was subsequently deleted. Meanwhile, Facebook^[13] user JG Brown posted the mugshot along with arrest record screenshots.

Where's Waldo?-Style Edits

In 2018, edits of the meme in which people subtly photoshopped Luciano into other pictures grew popular, particularly on Tumblr. There, one would post an image witch captions like "he's here," leading to reblog chains of people asking "Where the f--k is he?" and similar questions. For example, one of the early edits in this style, posted by ray-winters-sings on September 20th, edited an image of some of the Super Smash Brothers Ultimate roster (shown below, left). Another edit posted by user axleheart on October 6th photoshopped Luciano into the poster for the new Halloween film (shown below, right).

The popularity of these edits led to the creation of two blogs titled "Where the F--k Is He?" devoted to reposting examples of the meme.^[14]^[15] On October 9th, Tumblr user givemethefrenchfries^[16] compared "I’m fcukibng shakinbg where the f--k is he” to a comment akin to Is This Loss?

Location

On @LuckyLuciano's Twitter profile, an address in Tampa, Florida is listed, which has been identified as the location of the original "You know I had to do it to em" photograph. On February 3rd, 2018, YouTuber DawnSavior uploaded a video featuring Google Earth of the address (shown below).

On July 4th, 2018, Twitter user @BrendanHersh^[18] tweeted a photograph of himself recreating the photograph at the same location (shown below).

On November 27th, 2018, Twitter user @JeffJoseph96^[17] tweeted a photograph of himself standing in the same location as the original Lucky Luciano photograph (shown below). Within 48 hours, the tweet received more than 173,000 likes and 34,200 retweets.