My Sides — Animated GIF of shirtless gamer laughing at computer monitors with 'HA' text

My Sides

2000catchphraseclassic

Published September 7, 2026

"My Sides" is a laughter shorthand meaning someone laughed so hard their ribs ache, often dropped as a one-word reply under a funny post1. The phrase went from early-2000s message-board slang to a 4chan staple by late 2012, when its escalated variant "my sides are in orbit" took off3.

catchphrase memes 4chan memes slang memes reaction memes urban dictionary memes

Overview

Urban Dictionary's first definition from October 2012 boiled the phrase down to "I split my sides," a reference to the physical strain of laughing hard1. The example use in that entry set the tone: a groaner pun ("what's 300 pounds, lives in the attic, only eats pizza and only drinks beer? you") followed by "I split my sides" as the reaction1.

The escalated variant "my sides are in orbit" pushes the joke further by pretending the ribs reached escape velocity, and it usually shows up in 4chan threads featuring absurd webms, sports fails, and crossposts to niche boards3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Blog comments / 4chan and Tumblr (viral spread)
Date
2000

"My Sides" descends from "laughing 'til my sides hurt," abbreviated LTMSH, which appeared on Roshan's Humour List of internet acronyms as early as 1996, and its trimmed form first surfaced on October 27, 2000 in a blog comment reacting to a post titled "50 ways to get kicked out of the mall"2.

How It Spread

Through the early 2000s, the phrase drifted across Usenet newsgroups and small message boards including counterculture site Bombshock, Tolkien fan hub Council of Elrond, and gaming board Terra Arcanum2. By February 2008 it had gone live across 4chan3.

October 2012 was a turning point when Urban Dictionary published its first "MY SIDES" entry, giving casual internet users a definition to point to when the phrase came up1.

The variant "My Sides Are in Orbit" first appeared on 4chan's /sp/ board on August 28, 2012, aimed at a since-deleted YouTube video3. It jumped to /fit/, /mlp/, and /m/ over the following months, showing up in threads for fitness, My Little Pony, and Mecha content3.

How to Use This Meme

Common convention is to drop "my sides" as a short standalone reply under something funny, often with no accompanying text1. For the intensified version, posters typically pair "my sides are in orbit" with the webm or image doing the actual joke work3.

Frequently Asked Questions