What is Listening to Trash?

Listening to Trash is a reaction image of a man pressing earbuds into a trash container, used to call music garbage by treating the bin as the audio source.

Where did Listening to Trash come from?

Twitter user @HiphopStrt posted the first image on May 15, 2014, captioned Me listening to OLAMIDE and WIZKID. A second cropped photograph was added by Instagram user @kilogramlincoln on September 1, 2017.

What does Listening to Trash mean?

The picture accuses a song, album, or artist of being trash by showing someone listening to an actual garbage container, turning the pun into a visual burn.

How do you use Listening to Trash?

Pair the photograph with Me listening to [artist] to insult the music, or use the second image with What's he listening to and name the target.

Is Listening to Trash still popular?

The image is still used as a reaction across Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram in music criticism contexts, though the joke stayed narrow and never broke into general reaction use.

Listening to Trash

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Published September 5, 2026

Listening to Trash is a set of photographs showing men pressing wired earbuds into trash containers, used as a reaction image to call music garbage. The original picture surfaced on Twitter in May 2014 but sat unused for three years, then flipped into a running joke in 2017 alongside a second image that became a template for dunking on rappers.

reaction memes music memes hip hop memes exploitable templates delayed virality memes

Overview

The format works through two related photographs, each showing a man with earbuds run into a garbage container as if the trash itself was playing audio. Posters caption the picture with the name of a musician, album, or song they want to insult, letting the bin do the pun work for calling a track trash1. It slots cleanly into music criticism threads where writing out the insult would land harder than pairing it with a joke image.

The second variant, cropped from a different photograph, adds a What's he listening to prompt with the target artist supplied as the punchline2. Between the two setups, users can react to a musician's tweet, reply to a recommendation, or drop the picture under any post promoting a new release, letting the visual carry the burn3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter / Instagram (viral spread)

Date

2014

On May 15, 2014, Twitter user @HiphopStrt posted the original photograph of a man pressing earbuds into a trash container, captioned Me listening to OLAMIDE and WIZKID1. The photographer and the man in the picture are both unknown, and the tweet did not travel at the time.

The paired image entered the joke on September 1, 2017, when Instagram user @kilogramlincoln posted a cropped photograph of a different man in the same pose, captioned What's he listening to and tagged to rapper Lil Yachty2.

How It Spread

The 2014 post barely moved for three years. Reposts began appearing on Twitter through 2017, with users pulling the trash bin picture out any time a musician tweeted lyrics or promoted a new track they wanted to mock3. The image also started showing up on Reddit and other platforms in the same window, aimed at rappers whose new releases were catching heat.

From 2017 onward, both the original photo and the What's he listening to crop ran side by side as reaction images across Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram, most often deployed inside music arguments or under an artist's promo tweet2. The joke's grammar stayed narrow, keeping it tied to hip hop and pop discourse rather than crossing into general reaction use.

How to Use This Meme

Common convention: pair the trash bin photograph with the name of a musician, album, or song you want to call bad, formatted as Me listening to [artist]1. For the second variant, the typical caption asks What's he listening to and the reply supplies the target, often posted as a response to a tweet from that artist2.