The meme was born in 2014 when Reddit user aaduk_ala submitted a photograph titled "Trying to hold a fart next to a cute girl in class" to the /r/funny subreddit. "Well, the guy who took the picture has been a good friend of mine since I first moved out here to Texas, so he knew I was able to make the face anytime I wanted," Mike McGee told Unilad. "So he wanted to make a funny Twitter caption and told me to make the face. He posted it and like two or three months after he posted it, it took off!"