"I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall" is almost a universal feeling about that moment when you're in a conversation and the person you’re talking to just isn’t hearing what you are saying. We've all experienced the frustration of being unable to say what we want or ultimately being ignored.

This popular sentiment was translated into a memetic format back in 2010, inspiring a series of image macros and also being used as a reaction image on social media. Here's the story behind the talking to brick wall meme.

What Is The 'Talking To Brick Wall' Meme?

The "talking to a brick wall" meme is an image and video clip of a Black man having a conversation with a brick wall, originating from a November 2010 YouTube video posted by Maronzio Vance poking fun at how it tends to feel talking about politics to other people. The creator captioned the video with the text "At times I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall. So I went out and found one that will listen" (shown below).

How Did The 'Talking To Brick Wall' Meme Become A Popular Meme?

Vance's relatable moment of having a mid-conversation with the wall was screenshotted by his fans and became the subject of memes as early as 2014 on sites like Tumblr and Twitter / X to joke about conversations that go nowhere (examples shown below, left and right).

What Is The DonoWall Emote?

The "talking to a brick wall" meme format continued to grow over the following years, even inspiring a Twitch emote in July 2020, after a fan of Twitch streamer xQc, FewBreath, submitted a GIF of Vance's video with the name DonoWall as an emote to Twitch extension BetterTTV (shown below). The emote is used when someone is being completely ignored or disregarded, whether in stream chat or donation.

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For the full history of talking to brick wall, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.