Pizza is an oven-baked flatbread with tomato sauce, cheese and toppings that also carries a large online fandom built around fan art, fan pages and viral videos.

Where did Pizza come from?

The word was first documented in Gaeta, Italy in 997 AD, and the modern tomato-topped version took shape in Naples by the late 18th century.

What does Pizza mean?

Online, 'pizza' is often used as a shorthand for over-the-top food love, with Urban Dictionary calling it 'a sacred food gifted to mankind by the gods'.

How do you use Pizza?

Fans post exaggerated devotion, absurd topping ideas, pizza fan art or the slowed 'Gimme Pizza' clip as a surreal reaction video.

Is Pizza still popular?

Yes, pizza is still one of the most followed food subjects online, with tens of millions of Facebook fans across the main pizza page and chain accounts by 2014.

Pizza

997food fandom / cultural subjectclassic

Published September 22, 2026

Pizza is an oven-baked flatbread topped with tomato sauce, cheese and toppings that picked up a massive online fandom in the 2010s, sitting alongside bacon as one of the internet's favorite foods to obsess over. Fan pages, art dumps and viral clips like the slowed-down 'Gimme Pizza' video turned a dinner staple into a full-blown meme subject.

food memes fandom hype memes deviantart memes early 2010s memes mashup video memes

Overview

Pizza's online life is less a single joke and more a sprawling fandom built around a food that people treat like a personality trait. Fans post pizza fan art on DeviantArt, write pizza fan fiction, run pizza-themed Facebook pages with tens of millions of followers, and share BuzzFeed listicles about being romantically attracted to pizza3. Urban Dictionary entries call it 'a sacred food gifted to mankind by the gods,' which pretty well captures the tone1.

The fandom overlaps heavily with the same 'food worship' energy that fuelled bacon's online moment, leaning on hyperbole, thirst-post captions, and 'pizza is life' style declarations. Alongside the fan work sits a small but sticky video meme corner, most famously the surreal 'Gimme Pizza' clip from a mid-'90s Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen sleepover video, which was pitch-shifted and slowed into internet horror in 20102.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Italy (culinary origin) / YouTube and Facebook (viral spread)

Date

997

Foods resembling pizza go back to the neolithic age, but the word 'pizza' is first documented in the southern Italian town of Gaeta in 997 AD3. The dish as most people recognise it today, flatbread with tomato on top, only became possible after tomatoes were brought from the Americas into Europe in the 16th century, and by the late 1700s it was a tourist draw in Naples3.

Pizza's move from beloved food to internet obsession is harder to pin to a single date, but by the early 2010s dedicated fan pages, fan art hubs and viral pizza content were already stacking up across social platforms3. The 'Gimme Pizza' rhyming singalong, originally featured in the 1995 film 'You're Invited to Mary-Kate and Ashley's Sleepover Party,' was recut and slowed down by YouTuber philipmserious in 2010 under the title 'When does a dream become a nightmare?,' which pushed the clip into meme territory2.

How It Spread

By April 2014, the general Pizza Facebook page had passed 33.4 million likes, Pizza Hut's official page was over 11.3 million, and Domino's sat above 9.1 million, giving pizza one of the biggest food followings on the platform1. On DeviantArt, fan art submissions tagged pizza cleared 120,000, and Fanfiction.net hosted more than 2,000 pizza-themed stories by the same point1.

BuzzFeed leaned into the fandom with pieces like 'What It's Like to Be Romantically Attracted to Pizza' and 'How Extreme Is Your Devotion to Pizza?,' framing pizza love as a personality identity rather than a food preference1. Etsy shops built full inventories of pizza-themed handmade goods, and Fanpop hosted a dedicated pizza fan hub1.

The video side of the fandom was carried mostly by 'Gimme Pizza.' philipmserious's 2010 slowed edit turned a chirpy Olsen twins singalong into an unsettling loop that got passed around for years as horror-adjacent nostalgia bait3. Other YouTube uploads kept the pizza-as-content pipeline going, from cooking clips to fan compilations4.

Timeline

0997

The word 'pizza' is first documented in the southern Italian town of Gaeta.

1522

Tomatoes reach Europe from the Americas, eventually enabling the modern tomato-topped pizza.

1780

Pizza gains widespread popularity in Naples and becomes a local tourist draw.

1995

The 'Gimme Pizza' singalong appears in 'You're Invited to Mary-Kate and Ashley's Sleepover Party.'

2010

YouTuber philipmserious uploads a slowed, pitch-shifted 'Gimme Pizza' as 'When does a dream become a nightmare?'

2014-04

Pizza's Facebook page passes 33.4 million likes and DeviantArt hosts 120,000+ pizza fan art submissions.

How to Use This Meme

There is no single template. People declare undying love for pizza in captions, post absurd topping combinations, share pizza fan art and fan fiction, or recirculate the slowed 'Gimme Pizza' clip as a surreal reaction video2. The common convention is exaggerated devotion, treating pizza like a relationship rather than a dinner order1.