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

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.

## Origin
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 tweets[1]. Mathew posted it to Twitter with a caption, and it got almost no attention at the time[1].

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 archived[2].

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

## 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 him[1]. 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 take[2].

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 expression[1]. 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 minutes[2].

## 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 caption[3]. 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 title[2].

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 hours[2]. 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 day[2].

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 up[1].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class?
It is a reaction image of a red-faced male student straining at his desk, used as a stand-in for any kind of silent, suffering restraint[2].

### Where did Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class come from?
The source photo is of Michael McGee, taken in October 2013 by his friend Mathew during class at Northwest High School in Justin, Texas, and posted to Twitter with little traction at the time[1].

### What does Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class mean?
It visualizes the comic agony of holding something in, originally gas next to a crush, but by extension any opinion, reaction, or truth the captioner is biting back[2].

### How do you use Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class?
Users typically pair the image with a caption framing a situation that demands silent restraint, often following the 'trying to hold in ___ next to ___' pattern or layering political and shock captions over the face, as in the December 2015 Daquan Instagram edit[2].

### Is Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class still popular?
It is a classic 2010s Reddit-era reaction image rather than a current trend, with its biggest documented waves in March 2014 and the late 2015 photoshop revival[2][1].

## References
1. [https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/kid-blowing-up-meme-interview/](<https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/kid-blowing-up-meme-interview/>)
2. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/trying-to-hold-a-fart-next-to-a-cute-girl-in-class](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/trying-to-hold-a-fart-next-to-a-cute-girl-in-class>)
3. [https://funnyjunk.com/Trying+to+hold+a+fart+next+to+a+hot+girl/funny-pictures/5039790/](<https://funnyjunk.com/Trying+to+hold+a+fart+next+to+a+hot+girl/funny-pictures/5039790/>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/trying-to-hold-a-fart-next-to-a-cute-girl-in-class
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