Crowd Stepping Back From a Man

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About

Crowd Stepping Back From a Man refers to a viral GIF of a large crowd of people stepping back from a man moving through the crowd, forming a circle around them. The animation originates from the 2019 video game KIDS and gained popularity in GIF captions following a viral tweet in June 2019.

Origin

On May 28th, 2019, developers Mario von Rickenbach and Michael Frei released KIDS, an indie video game centered around crowds (trailer shown below, left).^[1] On the same day, YouTube^[2] channel App Unwrapper posted a full walkthrough of the game that received over 29,000 views in two years (shown below, right). In one part of the game, a man walks through a large crowd of people, with people constantly stepping away from him to form a circle.

On June 1th, 2019, Twitter^[3] user @SoopremeJeri posted a tweet which used a GIF based on App Unwrapper's video, writing "There's plenty of fish in the sea / The fish in the sea:" (shown below). The tweet received over 1.7 million views, 24,400 retweets and 48,200 likes in two years.

“There’s plenty of fish in the sea”The fish in the sea: pic.twitter.com/4khVq8wt47

— 𝙎𝙪𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙢𝙚 (@SoopremeJeri) June 1, 2019

Spread

Following the viral spread of @SoopremeJeri's post, the GIF gained significant popularity on Twitter^[4] in early June 2019. On June 3rd, 2019, Twitter user @JohnnyNeff reused the GIF in their tweet, captioning it "me trying to make mutuals on twitter." The tweet received over 170 retweets and 560 likes in two years. On the same day, Twitter^[5] user @GnarlyAstrology posted another joke based on the GIF, writing "Air signs and Capricorns trying to get in touch with their emotions" (shown below). The tweet received over 1,000 retweets and 4,800 likes in two years.

Air signs and Capricorn’s trying to get in touch with their emotions pic.twitter.com/gdSof9aKIc

— Dirtbag 🚀✨ (@GnarlyAstrology) June 4, 2019

On June 4th, 2019, Twitter^[6] user @itrainthots copied @SoopremeJeri's tweet, gaining over 5 million views, 44,500 retweets and 110,600 likes in two years. On June 7th, Instagram^[7] user memelif3_ recreated the post, with the GIF caption gaining over 2.6 million views and 300,000 likes in the same period. June 8th, 2019, reposts on Reddit^[8] and iFunny^[9] received over 74,900 upvotes and 63,500 smiles, respectively.

In the following years, the GIF maintained moderate popularity online, being used as a reaction and in GIF captions. For example, on January 13st, 2021, Twitter^[10] user @LakeShowYo posted a meme that gained over 4,500 retweets and 25,000 likes (shown below).