New Phone, Who Dis? — Illustration of a pink hand holding a smartphone with text 'New Phone Who Dis?' on black background

New Phone, Who Dis?

2009catchphraseclassic

Published September 8, 2026

New Phone, Who Dis? is a text-message deflection line used to dodge unwanted conversations by pretending not to recognize the sender. First tweeted by @JeffCl in August 2009, the phrase bounced through The Mindy Project and a Seth Meyers Emmy monologue before exploding on Twitter and Tumblr as one of the defining reply formats of the mid-2010s12.

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Overview

New Phone, Who Dis? works as a fake-out reply pretending the sender's number is not saved, giving the responder plausible deniability for ignoring the message. The joke lands because everyone with a smartphone has actually done it, and the line reads as breezy rather than rude2.

On Twitter and Tumblr, the format shifted from real texts to imagined conversations, with users pairing the line against increasingly absurd counterparties: exes, God, personified concepts like Darkness, even nagging landlords1. That elasticity is what pushed it past a one-liner and into a reusable reply template that still turns up in group chats and reply guys' quote tweets3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (origin) / Tumblr and Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
@JeffCl
Date
2009

On August 18th, 2009, Twitter user @JeffCl posted a tweet joking about firing back "I got a new phone who dis" at a message from a deleted contact, which author Rachel McCarthy James later identified as the first extant use of the phrase34. The tweet sat mostly dormant for years before mainstream television picked up the same beat.

On December 4th, 2012, the American sitcom The Mindy Project aired the episode "Two To One," in which Mindy Kaling's character answers a panicked text from a colleague with "New phone Who dis?"3. The scripted moment gave the line a wider audience well before it broke as a repeat-use meme format.

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How It Spread

The phrase jumped from niche to widely quoted on August 24th, 2014, when Seth Meyers hosted the Emmys and joked that when he asked Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to help write his monologue, "they both jumped at the chance to write back: 'new phone, who dis?'"5. The line landed with the room and pushed the format back onto Twitter within days.

On October 29th, 2014, Twitter user @dubstep4dads paired the line with a mock come-over text and an image of a woman talking into a banana, and days later on November 2nd @UNDEADTRESOR flipped the Simon and Garfunkel lyric with "Darkness: New phone, who dis?"3. On December 12th, Tumblr user royalblackpirate ran "Me: God, let me pass my finals / God: new phone who dis," a post that pulled in more than 174,000 notes3.

By mid-2015 the format had reference material of its own: the Tumblr account Meme Documentation published a rundown on May 27th, and on July 22nd, Urban Dictionary user jutn added a definition that racked up over 700 upvotes2. Music and video builds followed, including a song called "New Phone, Who Dis?" from the FX series You're The Worst uploaded to YouTube in March 20163, and Cakes Da Killa's track "New Phone (Who Dis)" released via Adult Swim's YouTube channel that October3.

How to Use This Meme

The template is a two-line fake text exchange. First line sets up an incoming message, usually from someone with emotional leverage, a bill collector, an ex, a deity, an abstract concept. The second line is the reply, typed exactly as "new phone, who dis?" with the deadpan lowercase intact. Common conventions include pairing it with an obviously recognizable sender so the dodge itself is the joke, and often chaining a third line where the sender reacts in confusion.

Frequently Asked Questions