"Man or bear" (also called "man vs. bear") is a viral social media debate and Internet meme centered on a scenario for women to consider: whether they would prefer to be alone in the woods with a man or a bear. [1] The meme originates from a popular TikTok video by Screenshot HQ posted in April 2024. The prominence of responses choosing the bear has been associated with the widespread violence against women.
The meme originated from a TikTok video published by Screenshot HQ in April 2024 which interviewed eight women on the question, with seven out of them picking the bear. [1] The post went viral and gained over 16 million views in two months. [2] [3]
The online reception to the Screenshot HQ video was divided. [4] Most women responded to the meme saying they would also choose the bear. [5] [6] One of the main reasons they chose this answer was that men are more likely to commit sexual violence against women than bears. [6] Other popular arguments included that bears are unable to commit acts worse than murder, that they are more predictable, and that they treat women as people. [1]
When posed the same question, many men also chose the bear. [1] [7] Many men also negatively responded to the common choice of the bear among women. [8] [9]
Some journalists compared the response of women sharing their assault experiences online with the #MeToo movement. [5] [10] Femi Oluwole of The Independent argued that the debate showed that men need to be more informed about the dangers women face in society. [11] Journalists highlighted various murder cases such as Grace Millane's and Furuta Junko's. [11] [12]
Rachel Ulatowski of the feminist magazine The Mary Sue called men's backlash to women picking the bear "bizarre" and "laughable" due to weak arguments with misused statistics and claims of misandry. [8] Some journalists compared it to the #NotAllMen meme. [10] [6] Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC argued that discussion focusing on the actual hostility of bears misses the point, which she said was the "dangers that women experience in [a] world" with men. [7]
The World Health Organization states that one in three women face sexual or physical violence in their lifetime. In contrast, there have been 664 bear attacks over fifteen years with most being non-fatal, which means bear attacks are far less common. [6] Bear expert Jean-Jacques Camarra says that bears have evolved to fear humans, and would therefore most likely run away. [3] Wilfred Reilly of the National Review criticized the bear-favoring statistics people shared as an example of the base rate fallacy that he stated was widespread in modern American politics. [13] Megan McArdle of The Washington Post argued that those statistics were a confusion of the inverse fallacy that "reinforce harmful stereotypes" of women being "irrational, neurotic and bad at math". [14]
Later in July, the influencer Amanda Wylie shared a video to TikTok about her encounter with a bear in the woods. She compared it to the "man or bear" meme, saying she would still "choose the bear". [15] [16] In addition, the influencer Sir Carter referenced the meme in the most viral LGBT TikTok of mid-2024. [17]
Kayleigh Donaldson of Paste associated the novel Bear (1976) by Marian Engel with the meme. [18] According to Tamlyn Avery of The Conversation , Julia Phillips's 2024 book Bear alludes to the debate during a scene with the main character Sam at a family funeral. [19]
An Internet meme, or meme, is a cultural item that spreads across the Internet, primarily through social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit. Internet memes manifest in a variety of formats, including images, videos, GIFs, and other viral content. Key characteristics of memes include their tendency to be parodied, their use of intertextuality, their viral dissemination, and their continual evolution. The term "meme" was originally introduced by Richard Dawkins in 1972 to describe the concept of cultural transmission.
A non-player character (NPC), also called a non-playable character, is a character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster or referee rather than by another player. In video games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer that has a predetermined set of behaviors that potentially will impact gameplay, but will not necessarily be the product of true artificial intelligence.
Vine was an American short-form video hosting service where users could share up to 6-second-long looping video clips. Founded in June 2012 by Rus Yusupov, Dom Hofmann and Colin Kroll, the company was bought by Twitter, Inc. four months later for $30 million. Vine launched with its iOS app on January 24, 2013, with Android and Windows versions following.
Viral phenomena or viral sensation are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. Analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, the term viral pertains to a video, image, or written content spreading to numerous online users within a short time period. This concept has become a common way to describe how thoughts, information, and trends move into and through a human population.
Bill Wurtz is an American musician, singer-songwriter, video producer, animator, and internet personality. He is known for his distinctive style of music, with deadpan delivery and singing, and his animated music videos, with surrealist, psychedelic graphics.
TikTok, whose mainland Chinese and Hong Kong counterpart as Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed with a smart phone app.
"Kream" is a song recorded by Australian rapper Iggy Azalea featuring American rapper Tyga. The song was released on 6 July 2018 by Island Records and serves as the lead single for her extended play Survive the Summer. It was written by Azalea, Tyga, and Ronny J. Production was handled by Ronny J, GT, and Wallis Lane. The song samples Wu Tang Clan's "C.R.E.A.M." and Raw Beat Mafia's "Dead End". The song passed 100 million streams on Spotify in February 2020, becoming Azalea's most recent song to do that since 2014's "No Mediocre" with T.I.
The NPC, derived from non-player character, is an Internet meme that represents people deemed to not think for themselves; those who lack introspection or intrapersonal communication; those whose identity is deemed entirely determined by their surroundings and the information they consume, with no conscious processing whatsoever being done by the person themselves. The meme gained further viral status on TikTok in 2022, with the surge of "NPC Streamers". The NPC meme, which graphically is based on the Wojak meme, was created in July 2016 by an anonymous author and first published on the imageboard 4chan, where the idea and inspiration behind the meme were introduced.
"Mia Khalifa" (originally titled "Mia Khalifa (Diss)", also known as "Hit or Miss", and sometimes stylized as "MiA KHALiFA") is a song by American hip hop group iLoveFriday (stylized as iLOVEFRiDAY). The duo of Atlanta-based rappers Aqsa Malik (also known as Smoke Hijabi) and Xeno Carr self-released the song on February 12, 2018, which was later re-released by Records Co and Columbia Records on December 14, 2018. It was included on their second EP, Mood (2019). The song was produced by Carr. The song is a diss track targeting Mia Khalifa, a Lebanese-American Internet celebrity and former pornographic actress. The decision to write a song dissing Khalifa arose over a misunderstanding. A faked screenshot, intended as a joke, seemed to show Khalifa, who once appeared in a pornographic film wearing a hijab, criticizing Malik for smoking while wearing a hijab in a music video. iLoveFriday thought the screenshot was legitimate.
Charli Grace D'Amelio is an American social media personality. She was a competitive dancer for over a decade before starting her social media career in 2019, when she began posting dance videos on the video-sharing platform TikTok. She quickly amassed a large following and subsequently became the most-followed creator on the platform in March 2020 until she was surpassed by Khaby Lame in June 2022. With over 155 million followers, she is the second most-followed person on TikTok, as of 2024.
Nicole Sanchez, better known as Neekolul, is an American internet personality, Twitch streamer, and YouTuber. In March 2020, her popularity online rose when she uploaded a TikTok featuring her lip syncing to the song "Oki Doki Boomer" while wearing a Bernie 2020 crop top; this TikTok was a direct reference to the "OK boomer" Internet meme that was popularized in late 2019. In July 2020, she was signed as a content creator for the gaming organization 100 Thieves. In 2023, she left 100 Thieves.
Brittany Alexis Tomlinson, known professionally as Brittany Broski, is an American social media personality, YouTuber, and comedian. She initially gained fame after a video of her tasting kombucha for the first time went viral on TikTok in 2019. She signed to United Talent Agency later that year and has since hosted the TikTok-produced podcast For You (2021), the pop culture-focused podcasts Violating Community Guidelines (2022–2023) with Sarah Schauer and The Broski Report (2023–present), and the YouTube talk show Royal Court (2023–present). She has frequently been referred to as one of TikTok's biggest stars and noted for her meme-focused humor.
The Daily Bugle is an American faux current affairs digital series serving as the center of several viral marketing campaigns created by Sony Pictures. Based on the fictional newspaper agency of the same name appearing in several Marvel Comics publications—the YouTube videos initially began as marketing for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Spider-Man: Far From Home, and deal with major events depicted in the MCU and later the Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU) films, with the second and third seasons primarily releasing on TikTok.
"She Make It Clap" is a single by American rapper Soulja Boy. The song was initially self-released on March 15, 2021, before seeing a wider global release under Virgin Music on April 5, 2021. Following its release, the song gained tens of millions of plays across streaming platforms, while also reaching number 23 on the US Billboard Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, as well as both the US and Global Billboard Top Triller charts.
Gina L. DiVittorio is an American writer, comedian, and political commentator. She is best known for The Pocket Report, a satirical news web series focused on American politics and society that she writes, performs, and edits, and a viral video about the dating app Hinge.
Ronnie McNutt was a 33-year-old American man and US Army Reserve veteran from New Albany, Mississippi, who committed suicide by shooting himself under his chin on a Facebook livestream, which went viral on various social media platforms due to its inherent shock value.
Skibidi Toilet is a machinima web series released through YouTube videos and shorts, created by Alexey Gerasimov and uploaded on his YouTube channel DaFuq!?Boom!. Produced using Source Filmmaker, the series follows a fictional war between human-headed toilets and humanoid characters with electronic devices for heads.
The phrase "girl math" is an internet meme, used to describe rationalizations by young women to justify indulgent and potentially irresponsible spending habits. It originated from the social media platform TikTok, later transferring over to Instagram and X.
"Looking for a Man in Finance" or simply "Man in Finance" is a satirical song written by singer Megan Boni known as @girl_on_couch.