Middle Finger Duel — Two people on a city sidewalk holding middle fingers up in each other's faces

Middle Finger Duel

2018viral videoclassic

Published September 6, 2026

In December 2018, a Twitter video of two men repeatedly flipping each other off on a SoHo sidewalk racked up millions of views before its creator admitted the whole thing was staged. The clip birthed a wave of edits and became a go-to reference for absurdly low-stakes internet feuds.

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Overview

The Middle Finger Duel is a 15-second clip shot on Mercer Street in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood, showing two young men walking away from each other while jabbing their middle fingers into the air with mounting theatrical fury1. There are no punches, no yelling, and at one point one of the duelists nearly gets clipped by a van but never breaks the bird2. The comedic charge comes from the mismatch between the flat setting and the operatic commitment of the gesture.

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Once the clip broke out, remixers piled on with sound effects and visual gags, turning each finger flip into laser blasts or lightsaber swings3. The bit also picked up a second life as a shorthand for pointless online arguments, with commentators pointing out that the video looked exactly like a Twitter fight rendered in physical space2. Conservative actor James Woods called the men "soy boys," while others zeroed in on the hypebeast-friendly SoHo backdrop2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter
Creator
Guy Blelloch
Date
2018

On December 4th, 2018, producer Guy Blelloch posted the clip from his Twitter account @apiecebyguy with the caption "The most intense fight I've ever seen"4. Within 24 hours the tweet was pushing past 168,000 retweets, 475,000 likes and 17 million views, according to Know Your Meme's tracking1.

Blelloch, listed on LinkedIn as creative director at Jerry Media, the agency that grew out of the Fuck Jerry Instagram account, quickly admitted to The Daily Beast that the fight was fake2. Speaking to The Cut, he said he and FuckJerry co-worker Chris Thompson had shot the video the previous Friday and that it was made for his personal account, not for Jerry Media3.

How It Spread

Numbers climbed fast after the initial post. The Daily Beast clocked the video at 3.5 million views and 40,000 retweets on the day of publication2, and by the time The Daily Dot wrote it up the clip was over 5 million views and 150,000 likes5. Media coverage stacked up quickly across The Daily Beast, The Cut and The Daily Dot, all landing within the same news cycle235.

Remix culture kicked in almost immediately. On the same day as the original post, Twitter user @DropToons dropped in laser images and pew-pew sounds every time the men flipped each other off, pulling more than 780 retweets, 2,900 likes and 62,000 views in a day1. Another user swapped in lightsaber noises for a Star Wars flavored cut5.

The reveal that the fight was staged didn't kill the momentum so much as reframe it. The Cut leaned into a bit comparing the duelists to Burr and Hamilton, joking about a Broadway adaptation3, while The Daily Beast noted this wasn't Blelloch's first attempted fake viral, listing earlier staged bits like the Citi Bike condom "catch" and a pull-up gag that never took off the same way2.

How to Use This Meme

Reference the Middle Finger Duel when a low-stakes online spat starts escalating with no real consequences, or share the clip as a visual shorthand for two people digging in over nothing. Edits typically add sound or visual effects on each flip, from lasers to lightsabers, though the format is loose enough that any absurd overlay works15.

Frequently Asked Questions