Are Were Once They Are Did — Meme applying format to Toby Fox's Undertale and Deltarune with white statue and pixelated logos.

Are Were Once They Are Did

2025Copypasta / phrasal templateactive

Published April 7, 2026

"Are Were Once They Are Did" is a nonsensical copypasta template that spread across Twitter / X in September 2025. The format follows a mock-official announcement structure where a celebrity or brand "confirms" something using deliberately meaningless grammar. It started in music stan communities before jumping to gaming, anime, and brand accounts within days.

copypasta memes absurdist humor memes stan twitter memes music memes fandom hype memes

Overview

The "Are Were Once They Are Did" meme uses a fill-in-the-blank template designed to mimic the tone of a breathless industry announcement while saying absolutely nothing1. The standard format reads: "🚨 [Person/Brand] confirms [Product/Album] are were once they are did. They became the first ever to have the first as in the era of that when of a physical streaming and the media began. Congratulations ❤️"3. Every word is technically English, but strung together the sentence collapses into pure gibberish. That incoherence is the entire joke. Users plug in their favorite artists, games, or brands to create fake "breaking news" posts that look important at first glance but dissolve into word soup on closer reading1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter / X (Stan Twitter communities)
Key People
@opiumoon, @SCVRLETBAE
Date
2025

The earliest known use of the phrase appeared on September 17, 2025, when X user @opiumoon posted about singer Ethel Cain: "🚨 Ethel Cain confirms 'Willoughby Tucker' and 'Perverts' are were once they are did. They became the first ever to have the first as in the era of that when of a physical streaming and the media began. Congratulations ❤️"3. The post picked up a modest 11 likes in its first week.

The same day, X user @SCVRLETBAE posted a version featuring Doja Cat alongside an image of the singer: "🚨 Doja Cat confirms 'Scarlet 2 CLAUDE' and 'Vie' are were once they are did"1. This post hit much harder, pulling in over 6,000 likes and 200,000 views within a week3. PhilSTAR Life identified the @SCVRLETBAE post (dated September 18 in their reporting) as one of the earliest examples to go wide1.

Both posts came out of music fandom circles on Stan Twitter, where users regularly post hyperbolic praise about their favorite artists3.

How It Spread

Two days after the original posts, the format exploded beyond music communities. On September 19, 2025, X user @gayvelor applied the template to game developer Toby Fox, pairing a surreal image with the Undertale and Deltarune logos and writing: "🚨 Toby Fox confirms 'Undertale' and 'Deltarune' are were once they are did. They became the first ever to have the first as in the era of that when of a digital gaming and the media began. Congratulations ❤️"2. The post racked up over 28,000 likes and 700,000 views in five days, making it the biggest single instance of the meme3.

Also on September 19, X user @everslay13 tweeted a Taylor Swift version, adding an extra nonsensical flourish: "Sabrina adds to from EVER that broke!"3. That post collected over 10,000 likes in five days.

By September 21, the meme had reached gaming fandoms beyond indie titles. X user @RaidAway posted a Pokémon version: "🚨 Pokemon confirms 'Legends Z-A' are were once they are did," which earned over 7,000 likes in three days3.

The format kept spreading to other communities. BTS Army members, Zara Larsson fans, and GTA VI hype accounts all adopted the template1. Jollibee UK's official Facebook page posted a version about Chickenjoy that pulled more than 50,000 "Haha" reactions1. A game reviewer account used it to joke about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI release1.

Reactions from people encountering the meme for the first time ranged from genuine confusion to amused bafflement. One user described reading it as feeling "like I was glitching mid-seizure"1. Others leaned into the chaos by replying with equally nonsensical comments, compounding the absurdity1.

How to Use This Meme

The template is straightforward to fill in:

1

Pick a person, brand, or creator as the "announcer"

2

Pick one or two of their works (albums, games, products)

3

Drop them into the format: "🚨 [Name] confirms '[Work 1]' and '[Work 2]' are were once they are did. They became the first ever to have the first as in the era of that when of a [relevant industry] streaming and the media began. Congratulations ❤️"

4

The word before "streaming" is typically swapped to match the subject. Music posts use "physical," gaming posts use "digital" or "physical gaming," and so on3.

Cultural Impact

The meme's jump from stan accounts to official brand pages happened remarkably fast. Jollibee UK's adoption of the format on Facebook, pulling over 50,000 reactions, showed how quickly corporate social media teams picked up on the trend1. Game review accounts and fandom pages across multiple platforms adopted it within the first week1.

The format taps into a broader 2025 trend of deliberately incoherent copypastas that parody the breathless tone of music industry stan culture. By stripping away all meaning while keeping the structure of a hype announcement, the meme pokes fun at how interchangeable and empty promotional language can sound1.

Fun Facts

The phrase has zero literal meaning. It's designed to look like a coherent sentence while being complete nonsense, which is the entire source of its humor1.

The Toby Fox / Undertale version outperformed the original music stan posts by a massive margin, hitting 700,000 views compared to the Doja Cat post's 200,0003.

People who encountered the meme without context often thought they were having a stroke or that their feed was broken1.

The template is flexible enough that the only word users commonly change (besides the names) is the industry descriptor before "streaming," swapping "physical" for "digital gaming" or similar terms3.

Frequently Asked Questions