Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class — Split banner showing original fart-holding meme photo beside a later selfie of the same subject in a cap

Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class

2014reaction imageclassic

Published October 3, 2026

A red-faced Texas teenager named Michael McGee hammed up a strained expression for a 2013 Twitter joke, and months later the photo blew up on Reddit under the caption 'Trying to hold a fart next to a cute girl in class.' The image became one of the signature reaction photos of 2014 to 2016, powering captioned edits about bottled-up frustration everywhere from classrooms to political arguments.

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Overview

The image is a tight shot of a male student at a classroom desk, cheeks puffed, forehead veins visibly bulging, as if one wrong move will end him1. The strained face does all the work, which is why captioners pair it with any scenario that calls for silent, teeth-gritting restraint, from biting back a sarcastic reply to pretending to agree with a bad take2.

Most edits keep the original Reddit caption or swap in a new 'trying to hold in ___ next to ___' setup, with the humor landing on the gap between the mild social situation and McGee's apocalyptic expression1. Later photoshops layered political and shock-value captions over the picture, including a December 2015 'Feminists' edit on Reddit and a Daquan Instagram repost joking about holding in the opinion that 'all men are pigs' for eight minutes2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (source photo) / Reddit (viral spread)
Creator
Michael McGee and friend Mathew
Date
2014

The source photo is of Michael McGee, who was a 16-year-old at Northwest High School in Justin, Texas when it was shot in October 2013. In an interview with The Daily Dot, McGee said his friend Mathew took the picture while they were hanging out in class next to a classmate named Amber, and that he was not actually straining against anything, he was just mugging because they both had reputations for posting funny tweets1. Mathew posted it to Twitter with a caption, and it got almost no attention at the time1.

The photo went viral months later. On March 2, 2014, Redditor aaduk_ala submitted it to /r/funny under the title 'Trying to hold a fart next to a cute girl in class,' and the post pulled in more than 2,500 votes and over 500 comments before being archived2.

How It Spread

The r/funny post set off a quick repost chain across the aggregator circuit. The same day, FunnyJunk user hiddenwarrior uploaded a copy with a 'hot girl' variant of the caption3. The following day, the @TheLADBible Twitter feed pushed the picture to a mass audience, and on March 4, 2014, it landed on 9gag, all of which cemented the Reddit caption as the image's canonical title2.

The photo had a second life in late 2015 as a political reaction image. On December 25, 2015, Redditor Professorloth64 posted a photoshopped version labeled 'Feminists' to /r/ImGoingToHellForThis that pulled upwards of 3,600 votes in 72 hours2. Three days later, the Daquan Instagram feed reposted the same edit with the caption 'When all men are pigs and you haven't told anyone in 8 minutes,' which racked up more than 136,000 likes in under a day2.

The revival drove reporters to find the kid in the picture. On January 4, 2016, The Daily Dot identified McGee by name, interviewed him, and ran his reaction to being a meme, in which he said his only regret was not copyrighting the photo and that his parents just laughed and shrugged when he told them it was blowing up1.

Timeline

2013-10

Michael McGee's friend Mathew snaps the red-faced classroom photo and posts it to Twitter, where it gets almost no attention.

2014-03-02

Redditor aaduk_ala submits the photo to /r/funny titled 'Trying to hold a fart next to a cute girl in class,' pulling over 2,500 votes.

2014-03-02

FunnyJunk user hiddenwarrior reposts the image with a 'hot girl' caption variant.

2014-03-03

The @TheLADBible Twitter feed posts the photograph to its mass audience.

2014-03-04

The image is reposted to 9gag, finishing the aggregator sweep.

2015-12-25

Redditor Professorloth64 posts a photoshopped 'Feminists' edit to /r/ImGoingToHellForThis, hitting 3,600+ votes in 72 hours.

2015-12-28

The Daquan Instagram feed reposts the Feminists edit with a new caption, racking up 136,000+ likes in a day.

2016-01-04

The Daily Dot publishes an interview identifying the subject as 18-year-old Michael McGee of Justin, Texas.

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