Tweet by @lorenshtarkey saying 'WE IRRITATING' with a collage of three paired-friend photos

We Irritating

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Published October 5, 2026

We Irritating is an exploitable image of two girls covering their faces with their hands beside the caption "We Irritating 😂😂😂." The picture first surfaced on Snapchat and Pinterest in 2017, then exploded in March 2019 when Twitter and Instagram users remixed it into one of that spring's defining K-Pop fandom edits.

exploitable templates catchphrase memes selfie memes kpop memes delayed virality memes

Overview

We Irritating, also stylized as #WeIrritating, is a selfie of two young women pressing their open hands against their faces in mock embarrassment, originally captioned "We Irritating 😂😂😂"1. The joke flips the usual self-deprecating caption, since the pair clearly find themselves hilarious, and the pose became the whole visual gag once the picture broke containment.

As an exploitable, the format works by swapping the caption while keeping the hand-over-face reaction intact. Edits range from goofy roleplay about being chaotic friends to K-Pop stans crediting bias groups for being too much online3. Urban Dictionary entries from 2019 glossed the phrase as a catchall for acting up with a friend, happy or sad, dumb or stupid, "we just irritating"4.

Origin & Background

Platform
Snapchat / Pinterest (source), Twitter and Instagram (viral spread)
Date
2017

The source photo was posted to Snapchat by a user going by lil baby and resurfaced on Pinterest on April 8th, 20171. The two women pictured were later identified by Twitter user @paigesimonex_ as @_fatoumarie and her friend Mckayla, who said the picture had been taken from them without permission2.

The image sat around for roughly two years before anyone turned it into a template. @_fatoumarie herself publicly flagged her discomfort with the picture being reused once it blew up, quoting viral threads of edits in March 20193.

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How It Spread

The exploitable took off in mid-March 2019 across Twitter and Instagram3. One of the earliest documented parodies was posted March 15th, 2019 by Twitter user @lorenshtarkey, and the format caught on fast inside K-Pop fandom accounts over the following week3.

On March 18th, 2019, Twitter user @videoswithkpop ran a long edit thread stacking multiple We Irritating variants, which pulled in over 400 retweets and more than 1,100 likes3. Instagram picked up the trend in parallel, with accounts like crybabygrande tying the pose to the "Go Crazy Go Stupid" bit and robloxbaddieregina reimagining the duo as Roblox avatars3.

@_fatoumarie, one of the women in the photo, quote-tweeted two of the biggest compilation threads to say the attention made her uncomfortable, which only pushed the image further around Twitter3. Urban Dictionary submissions arrived the same month, locking in "we irritating" as a standalone catchphrase people typed without the picture attached4.

Timeline

2017-04-08

The original selfie first appears on Pinterest after being shared from a Snapchat story by user lil baby.

2019-03-15

Twitter user @lorenshtarkey posts one of the earliest known parody edits of the image.

2019-03-18

Twitter user @videoswithkpop starts a long thread of K-Pop We Irritating edits that clears 400 retweets and 1,100 likes.

2019-03

@_fatoumarie, pictured in the photo, publicly flags discomfort with the picture being circulated as a meme.

2019-03

Urban Dictionary entries define "we irritating" as a standalone phrase independent of the image.

Frequently Asked Questions