What It Ways to Exercise It to Em

In 2010, a team of psychologists published a paper introducing "power posing." The thought was that adopting a physically confident opinion — say, arms akimbo and puffing out one's chest — produced actual changes that literally made one feel more powerful. "High-power posers experienced elevations in testosterone, decreases in cortisol, and increased feelings of power and tolerance for risk," they wrote. In other words, free your trunk and your mind would follow. Information technology was a seductive thought: elementary, counterintuitive, and easily applicative, and information technology took self-aid seminars and professional workshops by storm.

The original written report, and the thought of ability posing equally a scientific phenomenon, have since been discredited. Scientists trying to reproduce the initial report'due south findings were unable to exercise so, and 1 of the original researchers disavowed her ain findings. Still, the concept looms large in the public consciousness. For example, over the past few years, leaders of the Tory Party in Great britain have adopted what is known as the "Tory ability stance," an awkward pose in which the person stands with his or her legs noticeably too wide apart. As the Independent put it in 2016, "Tories keep doing that incredibly weird thing with their legs."

The Tory power opinion may seem like an odd anomaly, only as one body-language expert told Vice, "like a lot of political 'copied' behavior, information technology does bear the hallmarks of beingness deliberately taught in the Tory Party." However it'due south existence transmitted, the Tory power opinion has become a meme, "an thought, behavior, mode, or usage that spreads from person to person within a civilization," according to Merriam-Webster.

Like dances, stances and poses can easily become memes. Perchance the most famous meme stance to have emerged in recent years comes non from the United kingdom but from Tampa, Florida. A human known as Lucky Luciano (a pseudonym, natch) struck a pose at that place that has become and then infamous, then widespread, and gone through so many different internet wringers that it'south difficult to adequately sum up the meme's arc, journey, and meaning. But we might as well try.

Yous know I had to do it to em.

In September 2014, Luciano (who did non answer to requests for comment) posted on Instagram a photo of himself standing on a suburban sidewalk, hands clasped, with the explanation "Real men wear pink." The post has nearly 294,000 likes, but it is not the source of the meme. Over on Twitter, Luciano posted the same image but accompanied it with a different caption: "You know I had to do it to em." The tweet has been deleted for years, presumably because it was the subject of ridicule, but its legacy lives on.

Luciano is conspicuously flexing, proud of his outfit, trying to wait absurd (the "practice information technology") in order to brand his haters (the "em") jealous or desperate. There are enough of obvious things to poke fun at in the picture. There's the all-pink ensemble, the gaudy watch, the boat shoes, and the intense sock tan. There's also the slightly effort-hard captions. I don't hateful to sound derogatory, but I'm not sure how else to put this: He looks like a fuckboy. A viral tweet from July 2016, for instance, uses Luciano to represent a certain blazon of white guy: a fan of "real hip hop" and G-Eazy, the joke being that Grand-Eazy sucks.

But none of these aspects, individually, definitively explains why this photo has resonated and so widely and become such a durable meme. The pose is non unique. Neither is the outfit, nor the captions. Even combined together, information technology all seems rather ordinary. Withal the meme is withal broadly known. On Google Maps, "Where He Did It To Em" is categorized as a identify of worship. Brands apply the phrase to show that they are hip and with-it. Perhaps that itself is the joke: Luciano thinks he is notable notwithstanding is not particularly unique. Either style, the joke is at to the lowest degree partially on Luciano, just it seems he finally feels comfortable cashing in. His Instagram business relationship features various examples of people spotting his meme in the wild, and he'south begun selling merch adorned with the famous photo and catchphrase. He's got tens of thousands of followers, and later an arrest last yr he ran a crowdfunding campaign to help defray the associated costs.

In order to effort to understand Luciano improve, I sent his photograph to Traci Brown, a trunk-linguistic communication expert, who articulated the hidden meaning in his stance. "What'south interesting is the way he'southward holding his hands. He'due south putting them as a barrier betwixt himself and the residue of the world," she noticed. "That's not all that unusual. But then one of his hands is in a fist. That more often than not signifies anger. And the other paw is covering the fist. So he may be trying to hide the acrimony." Imagine what could've been if Luciano had unleashed the full extent of his flex. Would anyone who dared gaze upon the movie fifty-fifty yet be alive?

"His grinning seems pretty relaxed and genuine," Brown added.

The meme doesn't really belong to Luciano anymore, though. Depending on the platform yous encounter it on, the exact type of "Yous know I had to do it to em" meme you find can vary wildly. "You know I had to practise information technology to em" has, mysteriously and without a clear catalyst, grown from a single viral post into an entire ecosystem. A meta-reflection on shitposting, pattern recognition, and scavenger hunt all in one. Across social media, Photoshopping new characters onto the sidewalk background has become standard, only each platform has also put its own unique twist on the meme in other ways too.

On Facebook, Luciano is a sort of unofficial mascot of Thot Patrol, a page devoted to shitposting — posting inscrutable, deep-cut in-jokes designed to confuse anyone without the appropriate knowledge base. It's a "gang weed"–adjacent, supposedly-ironic-but-not-actually type of deep-fried meme group in which Luciano's form appears frequently (a "deep-fried" meme is one that is intentionally made to look sloppily made and heavily compressed, and thus more authentic). In September 2017, Thot Patrol posted a screenshot of my initial message to Luciano (he'd originally put it on Instagram) asking for an interview, and one user, Peti, decided to email me to explain the appeal of Lucky Luciano. "I am seventeen and know things about 'memes,'" Peti wrote. "The real memes you journalists desire to write sometimes nearly is merely shitpost … its best not to take them seriously since as i merely told before they are only shitposts." In other words, it is pointless to go at the pregnant of the meme because no pregnant was intended when the meme was made. The folio'south fans mostly don't overthink information technology. It doesn't matter why you do it to em, only that you practise information technology.

On Tumblr, Luciano has become remix provender. Its users are less interested in making fun of Luciano than they are in trying to find increasingly elaborate ways to incorporate him into, well, everything. Luciano has been remade in The Sims (in the made-up language Simlish, his catchphrase translates to "ba groba naby dooni tudem"). In another paradigm set, the Powerpuff Girls intro is remixed and so that the Professor accidentally creates Luciano following a Chemical X accident. He's been re-created in Minecraft and mosaic and edited into trippy GIFs. All of these posts rack up tens of thousands of interactions, likes, and reblogs. The cult of Lucky Luciano is stiff.

Elsewhere on Tumblr, the joke has go to Photoshop Luciano into other photos unobtrusively. It is akin to rickrolling, tricking someone into looking at "You know I had to do it to em" without their noesis or consent.

(Cheque the frame over Steven Universe'due south bed.)

The pain of a Luciano intrusion likewise manifests on Twitter, where, in add-on to elaborate remixes, the specter of Luciano looms over anyone who dares to adopt his stance. Tom Holland acquired a fair amount of distress earlier this month when he did it to em at the Spider-Man premiere. Reggie Fils-Aimé did it to em at a Nintendo launch party. Rami Malek has done it to em. An One thousand&M in the style of Dr. Phil does it to me in my nightmares.

These Luciano-alikes run in the same vein as memes like "Loss.jpeg," the infamous four-panel web comic whose silhouette users now see everywhere — "Is this Loss?," a user will ask themselves, squinting at an image. To recognize Lucky Luciano in a photograph that he is not in is to accept that your brain has been forever corrupted by the cyberspace. Is this photo of John Mayer an homage, a coincidence, or nothing at all? Everything runs together, and you can never escape information technology. Perhaps the all-time joint of the loftier-level shitposting that Luciano has get an unlikely leader of is this video by Twitter user @califortia. The all-time viewing communication I tin requite is to let information technology wash over yous.

To clarify each individual shot would lead to an infinite number of unanswerable questions. We should've seen this coming, we knew it had to be done, we were powerless to stop it.

What It Means to Do Information technology to Em