Baby This Is Keke Palmer — Direct message screenshot asking a user to take down a post about a sister killed by a Metra train

Baby This Is Keke Palmer

2020copypastaclassic

Published November 9, 2026

Baby This Is Keke Palmer / Metra Train Copypasta grew out of a June 2020 Twitter exchange where @TrixieNumba9 posted a photo of actor Keke Palmer and a stranger insisted it was their sister killed by Chicago's Metra rail. The three-word reply became a copypasta applied to random celebrity photos, picking up wider attention when Halle Berry joined in during April 2021.

copypasta memes celebrity reaction memes dismissal memes black twitter memes catchphrase memes

Overview

Someone pretends to recognize a famous person in a photo as a dead relative killed by a Metra train, Chicago's commuter rail system, and asks for the picture to come down out of grief1. The reply, "Baby, this is Keke Palmer" or whichever name applies, corrects the misidentification flatly without softening the response or acknowledging the grief claim2.

Posters apply the format to clearly recognizable celebrities, often musicians or actors in old-looking black-and-white or sepia images, and the humor runs on the absurdity of mistaking a widely known face for an obscure relative6. The Metra train specifically, rather than any generic accident, became part of the joke because Chicago readers recognized it and non-Chicago readers found the oddly specific detail funnier for being regional.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (origin) / YouTube (viral spread)
Creator
@TrixieNumba9
Date
2020

Twitter user @TrixieNumba9 posted the original exchange on June 21, 2020, sharing a still of Keke Palmer from her Akeelah and the Bee press appearance with a crude caption about girls who looked like that in high school2. A direct message followed claiming the photo showed the sender's sister, who had been killed by a Metra train, and asking her to take it down1. @TrixieNumba9 replied with "Baby, this is Keke Palmer," then recorded a video reading both messages aloud. YouTuber john, stay calm reuploaded that reading on September 1, 2020, where it drew more than 9 million views3.

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How It Spread

The exchange moved to /r/copypasta on November 2, 2020, where it collected more than 120 upvotes4. Twitter user @spnchbob attached the text to a photo of a K-pop artist on December 19, 2020, and other Twitter users ran it under random celebrity photos through early 20216.

Keke Palmer herself posted the same Akeelah still on April 7, 2021 with the joke caption "My granny was such a vibe in the 1940's"7. Halle Berry quote-tweeted that post the next day with "Baby, that's KeKe Palmer," gathering more than 264,000 likes5. Newsweek covered the stacked exchange the same day, which is how most people outside Twitter learned about the Metra Train copypasta1.

TikTok picked up the audio next. TikToker @onebrowraised reused the sound on October 26, 2021, swapping the Keke photo for Seong Gi-hun's Squid Game ID card for more than 2.3 million views8. Palmer began selling merchandise referencing the joke in December 20219. User @cuddapotato joked about Palmer's judging on the voguing competition Legendary on May 28, 2022, writing "Keke tossed Jameela under that Metra Train" for more than 45,000 likes10.

Timeline

2022-05-28

@cuddapotato uses the Metra Train joke for Palmer's stint on Legendary.

How to Use This Meme

The format needs a photo of a well-known celebrity or public figure. One person comments or sends a DM claiming the pictured person is actually a late sibling killed by a Metra train, often quoting the original message verbatim. The other party replies "Baby, this is [celebrity name]." Many users skip the setup entirely and just post the "killed by a metra train" copypasta text under famous photos as a standalone bit4.

Frequently Asked Questions