"I Saw Flying Lotus in a Grocery Store..." Copypasta — Black and white portrait of Flying Lotus in patterned sunglasses holding a dried leaf

"I Saw Flying Lotus in a Grocery Store..." Copypasta

2012copypastaclassic

Published August 30, 2026

The "I Saw Flying Lotus in a Grocery Store..." copypasta is a fake celebrity encounter story where the narrator claims a beloved musician or public figure acted like an obnoxious jerk during a mundane errand. First posted to 4chan's /mu/ board in June 2012 about experimental producer Flying Lotus, it spawned a mad-libs template that swapped in dozens of celebrities over the following years.

copypasta memes 4chan memes snowclone memes hoax memes music memes

Overview

The copypasta follows a tight formula. A first-person narrator claims they spotted a famous person doing something ordinary like grocery shopping, then walks through the celebrity behaving like a complete jerk to strangers, cashiers, or the poster themselves3. The prank works because the subject is almost always someone with a squeaky-clean public image, so a reader who loves the artist briefly believes their favorite is secretly awful.

Common substitutions include Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Gosling, Anthony Fantano, Kendrick Lamar1, and Nintendo director Masahiro Sakurai. The core beats of banal setting, escalating rudeness, and a disillusioned narrator stay intact, while the celebrity, the store, and the small offense get swapped to fit whichever board or fandom is reposting it3. The rewrites are why the story keeps landing on new audiences years after the original.

Origin & Background

Platform
4chan /mu/ (source) / KanyeToThe and wider 4chan (viral spread)
Date
2012

The earliest known version was posted to the 4chan music board /mu/ on June 29th, 2012, starring experimental producer Flying Lotus3. Within a few months the story circulated widely enough on 4chan to earn its own shorthand, and by mid-September 2012 posters referenced "that FlyLo copypasta" as a known artifact when trading stories about meeting musicians. The original author is anonymous, in keeping with 4chan convention.

How It Spread

On September 1st, 2012, the story jumped from /mu/ to KanyeToThe, one of the busier hip-hop community forums of the era2. It bounced back to 4chan in copypasta form and started attracting substitute celebrities. A Matthew McConaughey version showed up on December 25th, 2012, and a Ryan Gosling remix followed on January 11th, 20133.

Later variants pulled in Anthony Fantano, Kendrick Lamar, and Masahiro Sakurai, moving the format beyond music forums and into gaming boards and general pop-culture threads. A Kendrick-focused thread surfaced on Genius' discussion board, where fans traded the story and argued about whether the encounter was real1. The rumor circulated enough that Snopes opened an investigation thread on celebrity grocery-store misbehavior5, and r/OutOfTheLoop hosted a question asking about the origin4.

How to Use This Meme

The template typically opens with the poster casually mentioning they saw a celebrity at a grocery store (or coffee shop, gas station, record shop), then pivots into a specific rude act like cutting the line, snapping at an employee, or berating a fan. It often includes concrete product details to sell the scene, and closes on a line about how the poster will never look at the celebrity the same way again3. Picking a universally-liked figure is the common convention that gives the swap its punch.

Frequently Asked Questions