What is I Smell Like Beef?

A viral 2014 Vine of Ava Ryan repeating the phrase "I smell like beef," uploaded by her mother Katie Ryan.

Where did I Smell Like Beef come from?

Katie Ryan posted the six-second Vine on May 30, 2014, and later uploaded the full clip to YouTube in November of that year.

What does I Smell Like Beef mean?

Ava explained in a 2023 TikTok that she said it after being near her grandpa's steak cooking and seeing a sunset the same color as the pink meat.

How do you use I Smell Like Beef?

It's used as a reaction audio or quoted as a deadpan non sequitur in comment threads, often looped over unrelated footage.

Is I Smell Like Beef still popular?

The clip stayed a Vine classic and picked up a new wave of attention when Katie Ryan's 2023 TikTok explaining the backstory hit over 13 million views.

I Smell Like Beef

2014viral videoclassic

Published August 31, 2026

"I Smell Like Beef" is a 2014 Vine of a young girl, Ava Ryan, matter-of-factly repeating the titular phrase, uploaded by her mother Katie. The six-second clip pulled 15 million loops on Vine and became one of the platform's most-quoted deadpan classics.

vine memes child virality memes catchphrase memes absurdist humor memes accidental fame memes

Overview

The clip works as pure absurdist deadpan: Ava, then a small child, stares slightly off-camera and repeats "I smell like beef" with the calm confidence of someone reading the weather1. Its short runtime and odd phrasing made it endlessly loopable on Vine, which was designed around six-second replays, and later gave it a second life as a soundboard clip and TikTok audio3.

Because the line is unusual but syntactically clean, it fits into the "child says something bizarre" corner of Vine nostalgia alongside clips like "Look at all those chickens." Editors have used the audio in animation memes, notably a 2019 animated version by YouTuber starface, and creepy remixes that slow or pitch-shift the sound circulate widely too1.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Vine (original) / YouTube and TikTok (viral spread)

Creator

Katie Ryan and Ava Ryan

Date

2014

Katie Ryan posted the Vine on May 30, 2014, capturing her daughter Ava calmly repeating "I smell like beef" into the camera3. The six-second loop passed 15 million plays on Vine before the app was discontinued in 20171. The backstory stayed unexplained for nearly a decade until Katie shared a 2023 TikTok in which Ava said she'd been near her grandpa cooking steaks, noticed the meat looked pink, glanced at a similarly colored sunset, and decided the observation was "a poetic thing to say"2.

TikTok

How It Spread

On November 7, 2014, Katie Ryan uploaded the full clip to YouTube, which passed 11 million views in the years after1. The next day it hit /r/videos and picked up around 3,000 upvotes, followed by a HuffPost write-up titled "This Child Smells Like Beef And Needs You To Know"3. Buzzfeed later included the Vine in a roundup of Ava's clips, and Twitter user @isafrias_ dropped it into a 2017 thread of classic Vines that pulled over 1,500 retweets and 4,100 likes3.

The audio kept circulating after Vine's shutdown through YouTube compilations and animation memes1. In July 2023, Katie Ryan posted a TikTok in which a now-older Ava explained the origin story and plugged a limited "I smell like beef" merch drop; the video pulled over 13 million views within two months2.

How to Use This Meme

The clip is typically used as a reaction audio or quote reply: people drop the six-second sound over unrelated footage where something looks or smells suspicious, or reply to a bad take with "I smell like beef" as a deadpan non sequitur. Edits often loop or pitch-shift the line for extra comic timing, and the phrase is sometimes paired with sunset or raw-meat visuals as a callback to Ava's own explanation.