The He Just Like Me Fr meme is a reaction image of the character Denji from Chainsaw Man looking at a TV and screaming through tears that the person on the screen is literally him. The image, derived from a recaptioned manga panel, saw heavy use as a meme online beginning in mid-2021.
The meme is used any time a user wants to facetiously compare themselves to a figure. This is often done within a comical scenario in which the user bears no resemblance to the figure whatsoever, or the similarity is not necessarily a savory one.
Chapter 93 of the Chainsaw Man manga, entitled “You & Crappy Movies,” was released on November 16th, 2020. The main protagonist, Denji, begins the chapter by watching girls on TV holding up a sign featuring his name. At that point, Denji takes the TV in his hands, crying out “Ladies really love him.” This is the source of the eventual “he just like me fr” image.
From there, Twitter user @DatChaosGuy re-captioned the Chainsaw Man panels sometime around late May 2021. The above panel was transformed here into the “Literally Me”-type reaction image.
The earliest found reply featuring the image was in a post on Twitter by thatboyjozu on May 30th, 2021. The tweet saw a modest 180 likes, but the seed had been planted.
Six weeks later, on July 12th, 2021, the image was archived via the gimmick Twitter account @reactjpg. The post gained 70 retweets and 550 likes.
The use of the 'He Just Like Me Fr' meme became extensive online through the remainder of 2021 and into 2022, prominently finding a presence on Tumblr, iFunny, and even on YouTube. The video platform saw a post of a voiced version of the meme by user Vanegood on January 1st, 2022, which gained 115k views in a single year.
Shortly thereafter, on January 26th, 2022, a mystery Tumblr user replied to a Robert Downey Jr. Comments No Bitches meme with the image. The exchange gained over 9300 likes and reblogs.
The image expanded beyond just being a reaction in mid-2022, when it was edited as an exploitable format, with different characters being inserted into it by users.
On May 23rd, 2022, for example, a version of the meme was posted on Reddit by user warm-ice that utilized a Komi Can’t Communicate/Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure theme. It received over 810 upvotes in the /r/ShitPostCrusaders subreddit.
Similarly, a Pokemon variation was posted to iFunny on November 29th, 2022 by user IamNoble. It gained over 1,400 smiles on the app in two months.
He just like me fr has a somewhat American cousin in the form of the “Oh Man… He's Just Like Me!” meme, which is an image of a neckbeard watching the TV on a couch and saying the title phrase. The gag of the meme is the implication that the heroic, strong character on screen is very much unlike the couch man, but not in his own eyes.
The image first showed up in 2014 and has since become an exploitable image, with the character on the screen replaced with someone more typically relatable, despite having no qualities that relate to the average viewer.
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