You Not The Thinker!

Submission 16,989

Part of a series on Viral Videos. [View Related Entries]

About

You Not The Thinker! refers to a viral video from TikTok in which a babysitter or older brother shouts a little boy, "What are you doing? You not The Thinker!" in reference to the French statue. The video was uploaded in December 2022 and trended in memes going into January 2023, specifically via stylized edits that compared the boy to the statue. Other videos from the same TikToker (NUTRO / @omarnutro / @omarnutro2.0) trended as well, such as one where he yelled, "Bro you not Leonardo da Vinci bruh!" and another where he said, "You not Napoleon!"

Origin

On December 22nd, 2022, TikToker^[1] omarnutro2.0 posted a video that had Snapchat text reading, "Bro really thinking😭," and showed a fridge full of water bottles, multiple young, Black boys doing flips in a living room and one Black boy sitting down by himself in the pose of The Thinker.^[2] In the video, when TikToker omarnutro2.0 sees the one boy thinking, he exclaims, "You not The Thinker!" Over the course of one month, the video received roughly 37.2 million plays and 6.2 million likes (shown below).

Damn, ain't no water bruh? What the hell is going on bruh? Boy, what are you doing? You not The Thinker!

Spread

The video was reposted by other TikTok^[3]^[4] accounts soon after with each repost going viral in its own right. Thereafter, over-dramatic The Thinker edits comparing the boy and the statue surfaced. The first two edits surfaced on December 24th, 2022, with one from TikToker^[5] buzzer.goblin earning roughly 12,600 plays and 300 likes in one month (shown below, left) and the other from TikToker^[6] germanguyfromww3_alt earning roughly 27,700 plays and 790 likes in the same time period (shown below, right).

On December 29th, 2022, TikToker^[7] aris.amp_ posted an edit with a different TikTok^[8] from omarnutro in which he tells the boy, "Bro you not Leonardo da Vinci bruh!" The edit received roughly 1.8 million plays and 249,800 likes in three weeks (shown below, left). The trend spread into January 2023 as other TikTokers recreated the original video. For instance, on January 16th, 2023, TikToker^[9] itseffiom posted a video using the original sound but showing new people, gaining roughly 2.2 million plays and 450,100 likes in four days (shown below, right).