Neil deGrasse Tyson

2011reaction image / catchphraseclassic

Published September 7, 2026

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the American astrophysicist whose viral YouTube clips, tweets, and rage-comic reaction face turned him into one of the internet's favorite pop-science figures. Between 2011 and 2016 he became a fixture on Reddit and Twitter, spawning the 'Watch out guys, we're dealing with a badass over here' image macro and a long-running run of well-actually tweets that made him a running joke online.

celebrity reaction memesrage comicspseudo intellectual memesdismissal memessubreddit origin memes

Overview

The Neil deGrasse Tyson meme is really a bundle of overlapping formats built around the same person. The best known is a rage-comic style outline of Tyson's face lifted from a 2011 Big Think interview, usually captioned 'Watch out guys, we're dealing with a badass over here'1. The line is used sarcastically to mock people bragging about minor accomplishments online, with the drawing's raised eyebrows and dismissive posture doing the heavy lifting1.

Around the same image macro sits a second layer: quote pictures pairing Tyson's face with lines about science, atheism and the universe, which spread heavily on r/atheism and other science-leaning corners of Reddit in the early 2010s1. A third layer is Tyson himself online, where his tweets about grammar, holidays and pop culture became recurring punchlines. Coverage of his 2018 rant against the word 'awesome' was a good example, with Merriam-Webster subtweeting him by simply replying 'Neil.'23.

The running joke across all three formats is the same: Tyson as the guy who cannot help but insert an actually, whether he's talking about Newton on Christmas or telling a rapper the Earth is round45. That well-actually tone is what makes the meme legible even without the picture.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (source clip) / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2011

Tyson's rise as a meme was tied to a run of viral video clips on YouTube. On November 22, 2006, user agillesp123 uploaded a clip of Tyson describing to Richard Dawkins how to talk to the public about science, which pulled in more than 1.9 million views over the following years1. On March 2, 2012, Max Schlickenmeyer's video of Tyson answering 'What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?' passed 4 million views within a year, cementing him as YouTube's go-to talking-head astrophysicist6.

The reaction-image version has a more specific birth. The rage-comic outline was traced from a frame in a Big Think interview about longevity uploaded to YouTube on June 3, 2011, in which Tyson pulls a non-plussed face while explaining that Isaac Newton invented calculus before turning 261. That still was cropped into the 'Watch out guys, we're dealing with a badass over here' template that later flooded rage comics and image boards1.

How It Spread

Reddit did most of the work turning Tyson from scientist into meme. He hosted his first r/IAmA AMA on November 13, 2011, which pulled over 44,000 upvotes and 10,900 comments before being archived, followed by a second on December 17, 2011 and a third on February 29, 20121. Between the AMAs and heavy sharing of his quotes on r/atheism, Tyson's face and phrasing became house style for a certain kind of science-fan image macro1.

On Twitter he kept feeding the meme himself. On Christmas Day 2014 he wished Isaac Newton a happy birthday in a tweet that pulled roughly 77,900 retweets and 77,100 favorites in its first week, then followed up with jokes about the arbitrary premise of Christmas that drew backlash from Christian users1. In January 2016 he corrected rapper B.o.B, a self-identified flat earther, tweeting that Polaris disappears by 1.5 degrees south latitude and that B.o.B had 'never looked up'4. B.o.B responded with a diss track called 'Flatline', which was covered by Vox, Gawker and the A.V. Club and answered by Tyson's nephew Steve with his own diss that racked up 837,000 SoundCloud plays in 24 hours1.

The well-actually Tyson persona kept getting fresh oxygen from mainstream press. In 2016, Wired ran a lengthy satire imagining life 'in the world of' Tyson, where sunrises are terminators and birds don't sing, they emit vocal noises7. In April 2018 he complained on Twitter that 'awesome' should be reserved for curing polio or walking on the moon, which prompted Merriam-Webster's now-famous 'Neil.' reply and mocking write-ups from Mashable, CNET and the Daily Dot235.

How to Use This Meme

The rage-comic version is the simplest to deploy: drop the traced Tyson face onto any screenshot where someone is bragging about a low-stakes achievement and add the line 'Watch out guys, we're dealing with a badass over here', typically as a sarcastic reply1. Quote-image versions typically pair a photo of Tyson with a science-flavored one-liner about atoms, the universe or religion, and were a common convention on r/atheism in the early 2010s1. On Twitter the joke is often inverted: users write their own well-actually corrections in a Tyson-style voice, or simply reply to his real posts with a single-word burn like Merriam-Webster's 'Neil.'2.

Frequently Asked Questions

Neil deGrasse Tyson

2011reaction image / catchphraseclassic

Published September 7, 2026

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the American astrophysicist whose viral YouTube clips, tweets, and rage-comic reaction face turned him into one of the internet's favorite pop-science figures. Between 2011 and 2016 he became a fixture on Reddit and Twitter, spawning the 'Watch out guys, we're dealing with a badass over here' image macro and a long-running run of well-actually tweets that made him a running joke online.

celebrity reaction memes rage comics pseudo intellectual memes dismissal memes subreddit origin memes

Overview

The Neil deGrasse Tyson meme is really a bundle of overlapping formats built around the same person. The best known is a rage-comic style outline of Tyson's face lifted from a 2011 Big Think interview, usually captioned 'Watch out guys, we're dealing with a badass over here'1. The line is used sarcastically to mock people bragging about minor accomplishments online, with the drawing's raised eyebrows and dismissive posture doing the heavy lifting1.

Around the same image macro sits a second layer: quote pictures pairing Tyson's face with lines about science, atheism and the universe, which spread heavily on r/atheism and other science-leaning corners of Reddit in the early 2010s1. A third layer is Tyson himself online, where his tweets about grammar, holidays and pop culture became recurring punchlines. Coverage of his 2018 rant against the word 'awesome' was a good example, with Merriam-Webster subtweeting him by simply replying 'Neil.'23.

The running joke across all three formats is the same: Tyson as the guy who cannot help but insert an actually, whether he's talking about Newton on Christmas or telling a rapper the Earth is round45. That well-actually tone is what makes the meme legible even without the picture.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (source clip) / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2011

Tyson's rise as a meme was tied to a run of viral video clips on YouTube. On November 22, 2006, user agillesp123 uploaded a clip of Tyson describing to Richard Dawkins how to talk to the public about science, which pulled in more than 1.9 million views over the following years1. On March 2, 2012, Max Schlickenmeyer's video of Tyson answering 'What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?' passed 4 million views within a year, cementing him as YouTube's go-to talking-head astrophysicist6.

The reaction-image version has a more specific birth. The rage-comic outline was traced from a frame in a Big Think interview about longevity uploaded to YouTube on June 3, 2011, in which Tyson pulls a non-plussed face while explaining that Isaac Newton invented calculus before turning 261. That still was cropped into the 'Watch out guys, we're dealing with a badass over here' template that later flooded rage comics and image boards1.

How It Spread

Reddit did most of the work turning Tyson from scientist into meme. He hosted his first r/IAmA AMA on November 13, 2011, which pulled over 44,000 upvotes and 10,900 comments before being archived, followed by a second on December 17, 2011 and a third on February 29, 20121. Between the AMAs and heavy sharing of his quotes on r/atheism, Tyson's face and phrasing became house style for a certain kind of science-fan image macro1.

On Twitter he kept feeding the meme himself. On Christmas Day 2014 he wished Isaac Newton a happy birthday in a tweet that pulled roughly 77,900 retweets and 77,100 favorites in its first week, then followed up with jokes about the arbitrary premise of Christmas that drew backlash from Christian users1. In January 2016 he corrected rapper B.o.B, a self-identified flat earther, tweeting that Polaris disappears by 1.5 degrees south latitude and that B.o.B had 'never looked up'4. B.o.B responded with a diss track called 'Flatline', which was covered by Vox, Gawker and the A.V. Club and answered by Tyson's nephew Steve with his own diss that racked up 837,000 SoundCloud plays in 24 hours1.

The well-actually Tyson persona kept getting fresh oxygen from mainstream press. In 2016, Wired ran a lengthy satire imagining life 'in the world of' Tyson, where sunrises are terminators and birds don't sing, they emit vocal noises7. In April 2018 he complained on Twitter that 'awesome' should be reserved for curing polio or walking on the moon, which prompted Merriam-Webster's now-famous 'Neil.' reply and mocking write-ups from Mashable, CNET and the Daily Dot235.

How to Use This Meme

The rage-comic version is the simplest to deploy: drop the traced Tyson face onto any screenshot where someone is bragging about a low-stakes achievement and add the line 'Watch out guys, we're dealing with a badass over here', typically as a sarcastic reply1. Quote-image versions typically pair a photo of Tyson with a science-flavored one-liner about atoms, the universe or religion, and were a common convention on r/atheism in the early 2010s1. On Twitter the joke is often inverted: users write their own well-actually corrections in a Tyson-style voice, or simply reply to his real posts with a single-word burn like Merriam-Webster's 'Neil.'2.

Frequently Asked Questions