Drew Scanlon Reaction

2013reaction imageclassic

Published August 19, 2026

Drew Scanlon Reaction, also called Blinking White Guy, is a GIF of Giant Bomb video editor Drew Scanlon doing a wide-eyed double take. Pulled from a December 2013 Unprofessional Fridays episode, it took off on Twitter in February 2017 as shorthand for stunned disbelief.

reaction memesgif memesfacial expression memesaccidental fame memes2017 memes

Overview

Drew Scanlon Reaction, better known online as Blinking White Guy, is a short GIF of former Giant Bomb video editor Drew Scanlon glancing at the camera, blinking twice and pulling a small smirk in a classic double take1. People drop it into replies to signal wordless disbelief when someone says something dumb, wild or unexpectedly filthy2.

The clip is usually posted as a soundless looping GIF around one to two seconds long, framed as a webcam facecam over a gameplay stream2. Its power comes from how quickly Scanlon shifts from focused listener to open confusion, which reads on any platform without setup1. In August 2019, a spinoff multi-panel comic format called First Guy To rebuilt the GIF into a static comic gag about how fast someone reacts to a piece of news2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Giant Bomb (source), Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Drew Scanlon; GIF uploader Unknown
Date
2013

The clip comes from the December 6th, 2013 episode of Giant Bomb's stream series Unprofessional Fridays3. In that episode, editor-in-chief Jeff Gerstmann was playing the sandbox game Starbound and casually said he was "farming with my hoe," prompting Scanlon, sitting beside him on the webcam, to do the now famous double take2.

The earliest public reupload of the moment as a standalone reaction GIF was a July 27th, 2015 comment by user Tokubetsu on a NeoGAF thread, posted in response to a comic about Kanye West and Future4. For roughly a year and a half it drifted around gaming forums without breaking out2.

How It Spread

Blinking White Guy stayed niche until February 2017, when Twitter user @eksbl posted it on February 5th with a joke about surviving high school biology ("me: ill take a biology class, im smart enough for this just watch me / teacher: cells / me:"), pulling close to 50,000 retweets5.

Within days, other Twitter accounts were racking up tens of thousands of retweets with their own setups using the same GIF, which is when it crossed over from Giant Bomb in-joke to general reaction image2. Fans on the Giant Bomb forums6 and on a NeoGAF Giant Bomb community thread7 started tracking the meme's spread with a mix of pride and confusion about their coworker suddenly being everywhere2.

In August 2019, the GIF got a second life as First Guy To, a multi-panel format that pairs a still frame of Scanlon looking normal with a punchline frame of him mid-blink, used to show how fast someone reacts to a piece of news, in the same rhythm as the Surprised Pikachu template2.

How to Use This Meme

Typical usage is to quote-tweet or reply to a jaw-dropping or absurd statement with the GIF and no caption, letting Scanlon's double take carry the whole joke2. A common convention on Twitter is the "me / them / me:" setup where the GIF is the final "me:" line5. For the First Guy To variant, people often build a two panel image with a calm first panel and the blink frame as the reaction to something that happened seconds later2.

Frequently Asked Questions

Drew Scanlon Reaction

2013reaction imageclassic

Published August 19, 2026

Drew Scanlon Reaction, also called Blinking White Guy, is a GIF of Giant Bomb video editor Drew Scanlon doing a wide-eyed double take. Pulled from a December 2013 Unprofessional Fridays episode, it took off on Twitter in February 2017 as shorthand for stunned disbelief.

reaction memes gif memes facial expression memes accidental fame memes 2017 memes

Overview

Drew Scanlon Reaction, better known online as Blinking White Guy, is a short GIF of former Giant Bomb video editor Drew Scanlon glancing at the camera, blinking twice and pulling a small smirk in a classic double take1. People drop it into replies to signal wordless disbelief when someone says something dumb, wild or unexpectedly filthy2.

The clip is usually posted as a soundless looping GIF around one to two seconds long, framed as a webcam facecam over a gameplay stream2. Its power comes from how quickly Scanlon shifts from focused listener to open confusion, which reads on any platform without setup1. In August 2019, a spinoff multi-panel comic format called First Guy To rebuilt the GIF into a static comic gag about how fast someone reacts to a piece of news2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Giant Bomb (source), Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Drew Scanlon; GIF uploader Unknown
Date
2013

The clip comes from the December 6th, 2013 episode of Giant Bomb's stream series Unprofessional Fridays3. In that episode, editor-in-chief Jeff Gerstmann was playing the sandbox game Starbound and casually said he was "farming with my hoe," prompting Scanlon, sitting beside him on the webcam, to do the now famous double take2.

The earliest public reupload of the moment as a standalone reaction GIF was a July 27th, 2015 comment by user Tokubetsu on a NeoGAF thread, posted in response to a comic about Kanye West and Future4. For roughly a year and a half it drifted around gaming forums without breaking out2.

How It Spread

Blinking White Guy stayed niche until February 2017, when Twitter user @eksbl posted it on February 5th with a joke about surviving high school biology ("me: ill take a biology class, im smart enough for this just watch me / teacher: cells / me:"), pulling close to 50,000 retweets5.

Within days, other Twitter accounts were racking up tens of thousands of retweets with their own setups using the same GIF, which is when it crossed over from Giant Bomb in-joke to general reaction image2. Fans on the Giant Bomb forums6 and on a NeoGAF Giant Bomb community thread7 started tracking the meme's spread with a mix of pride and confusion about their coworker suddenly being everywhere2.

In August 2019, the GIF got a second life as First Guy To, a multi-panel format that pairs a still frame of Scanlon looking normal with a punchline frame of him mid-blink, used to show how fast someone reacts to a piece of news, in the same rhythm as the Surprised Pikachu template2.

How to Use This Meme

Typical usage is to quote-tweet or reply to a jaw-dropping or absurd statement with the GIF and no caption, letting Scanlon's double take carry the whole joke2. A common convention on Twitter is the "me / them / me:" setup where the GIF is the final "me:" line5. For the First Guy To variant, people often build a two panel image with a calm first panel and the blink frame as the reaction to something that happened seconds later2.

Frequently Asked Questions