Turn Up the Volume — Young boy with white headphones screaming with excitement and raising his arm

Turn Up the Volume

2016reaction imageclassic

Published October 4, 2026

Turn Up the Volume is a 2016 Twitter meme built around a photo of Vine star Jay Versace sobbing with headphones on while pumping his fist to music. Twitter users paired the shot with song lyrics and a motion-blurred volume knob to parody over-the-top emotional reactions, and the format became one of the signature Black Twitter joke templates of fall 2016.

reaction memes black twitter memes exploitable templates twitter memes 2016 memes

Overview

The core Turn Up the Volume format pairs the Jay Versace crying-headphones image with a second photo of a stereo volume dial blurred mid-rotation, captioned with lyrics the poster wants to pretend hit them unusually hard3. The humor leans on the mismatch between Versace's genuinely tearful face and whatever song is quoted, which is often something embarrassing or childish rather than a track anyone would reasonably weep to3.

The joke works because the source photo really was Versace crying over music he loved, so recontextualizing it with children's TV theme songs or disposable radio lyrics flips the sincerity on its head1. Dispute over what to call the format is part of its history. A December 2016 /r/OutOfTheLoop thread titled 'what's with the new meme of the volume dial and the black kid screaming while wearing headphones?' shows how confused onlookers were still trying to name the thing weeks after it blew up7. Know Your Meme filed it as 'Turn Up the Volume'3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter
Creator
@hayleydotsonn
Date
2016

On May 13, 2016, Jay Versace tweeted four selfies of himself crying while listening to Chance the Rapper's new album through his headphones, pulling over 710 retweets and 1,200 likes1. The tweet was earnest, Versace was openly emotional about the music, and the first of those four pictures became the source image when Twitter users repurposed it months later3.

Loading tweet...

How It Spread

The meme format arrived on November 3, 2016, when Twitter user @hayleydotsonn paired Versace's crying face with lyrics from Rae Sremmurd's 'Black Beatles' and added the blurred volume-knob photo that became part of the template. The post pulled over 8,300 retweets and 14,000 favorites2.

Within 48 hours, meme-aggregator accounts WORLDSTARHIPHOP and life of a blonde reposted the template45, and the swap-the-lyrics variation took hold. Replacing 'Black Beatles' lines with theme songs from kids' shows and similarly unfashionable material became the dominant twist through the rest of 20163.

Versace acknowledged his new meme status in a tweet on November 20, 20166. By December 5, confusion over what to call the image had reached /r/OutOfTheLoop, where users were still asking what the volume-dial-and-screaming-headphones format was even named7.

Timeline

2016-05-13

Jay Versace tweets four crying-headphones selfies while listening to Chance the Rapper, the source image for the later meme.

2016-11-03

@hayleydotsonn posts the first known meme edit, pairing Versace's photo with 'Black Beatles' lyrics and a blurred volume knob.

2016-11-04

Life of a blonde reposts the template to a wider audience.

2016-11-05

WORLDSTARHIPHOP picks up the format, pushing it into mainstream meme circulation.

2016-11-20

Jay Versace tweets acknowledging he has become a meme.

2016-12-05

A /r/OutOfTheLoop thread asks what the meme is called, showing the name was still unsettled.

Loading tweet...

Frequently Asked Questions