The year was 2017. Twitter was still "Twitter," relatable memes hadn't been wrung dry by corporate accounts and an animated GIF of a startled-looking man doing a double take was all over the internet.

The "Blinking White Guy" reaction meme conveyed disbelief, shock, confusion and mild judgment all at once, but most people had no idea where the clip came from or who the man was, and that just made the meme even funnier.

But the reaction GIF, it turns out, didn't come from a live news blooper or an awkward job interview. It came from a two-hour video game livestream hosted by a site called Giant Bomb, and the "white guy" in question was a video producer named Drew Scanlon, who was already on his way out of Giant Bomb to forge his own path on the internet when the meme blew up.

What is the Blinking White Guy Meme?

The Blinking White Guy meme is a three-second clip of a blue-eyed, blonde-haired man performing a perfect visual double-take.

The expression is equal parts stunned and confused, with the exact timing of the blink turning it into the ideal reaction to anything deeply uncalled for (among many other things, as its usage evolved).

The meme's breakout moment came in February 2017, when Twitter user @eskbl posted the GIF alongside a joke about being overwhelmed by basic biology.

The tweet gathered over 100,000 likes and 60,000 retweets, and dozens of other joke formats soon followed as it cemented its place in meme culture.

As the meme evolved, Scanlon’s blinking became the face of entire formats. A popular variation known as "First Guy To" recasts Scanlon as the first guy to experience human confusion as the "first guy to hear a parrot talk" or the "first guy to try milk," and so on.

Where did the Blinking White Guy meme come from?

The reaction comes from a 2013 episode of "Unprofessional Fridays," a long-running series from video game site Giant Bomb. The premise? Staffers bring a bunch of games to a livestream and play them potluck-style while cracking dumb jokes.

During one segment, Editor-In-Chief Jeff Gerstmann was demoing the spacefaring sandbox game Starbound when he said, "I've been doing some farming with my h0e here," referring to the common farming tool and prompting Scanlon to take a beat and deliver his now-iconic blink.

Scanlon, then a video producer and editor at Giant Bomb, was used to being on camera in goofy contexts.

As he told Know Your Meme in a 2020 interview, the whole thing was a throwaway moment. "It was a reaction to one of the dozens of jokes in a two-hour show that we produced every week," he said. "So I definitely do not remember doing it."

The earliest known use of the GIF came from a NeoGAF user named Tokubetsu, who posted it in July 2015 in response to a comic about Kanye West and Future.

Within the Giant Bomb community, fans frequently clipped segments from their shows and uploaded them as GIFs to the forums. It lived in that ecosystem for years before breaking into Twitter, untethered from its nerdy source material.

What Does Drew Scanlon Think About His Meme Blowing Up?

If Drew Scanlon was surprised to see his face become public property, he didn't show it. "Because everyone at Giant Bomb is somewhat used to being on camera and in front of an internet audience, the initial shock perhaps wasn’t as big as it may have been otherwise," he said in his KYM interview.

What got him was the moment it crossed into normie territory. "I think someone even shared a screenshot of their mom using it on Facebook," he told us. "That’s when I knew it had escaped our own weird corner of the internet."

That specific biology tweet remains his favorite. But more than that, he was fascinated by the meme’s ability to travel. “What was weird was seeing celebrities use the meme. Prior to that, I had this feeling that the internet was its own little world, separate from civilized society. Seeing the meme 'jump species' to the real world was jarring."

Despite the involuntary nature of meme fame, he took it in stride.

"While it is my face, I didn’t create the GIF or turn it into a meme. Often, it doesn’t really feel like it’s me," he explained. The internet, in other words, had repurposed his expression into a perfectly versatile message, one that continues to show up in bizarre ways. "My friends often send me the ones where I'm God."

What has Drew Scanlon been up to since he quit Giant Bomb?

Ironically, Drew Scanlon had tendered his resignation to Giant Bomb just weeks before his face became meme canon. He left to start Cloth Map, a crowdfunded travel documentary series that aimed to explore the world through the lens of games.

"No matter where we're from, games are a part of our lives," Scanlon said in our interview. "Just like food, games are both an expression of our culture and a way for us to celebrate being together."

For three years, Cloth Map covered everything from Cuba’s underground gaming network to the gray markets of Brazil, the cultural games of Mongolia, and the real-world ruins of Chernobyl.

During a trip to Brazil, Scanlon recalls arriving to interview content creators who immediately recognized him. "Here I was, thousands of miles from home, on another continent, and people knew my face," he said. "That was wild."

Since winding down Cloth Map in 2020, Scanlon has remained creatively active. He co-hosts Shift+F1, a Formula 1 podcast aimed at both newcomers and longtime fans, alongside journalist Rob Zacny and fellow video creator Danny O'Dwyer.

The show, which began as Alt+F1 in 2014, breaks down race weekends, F1 history, and the sport's increasingly strange politics. One of their most popular videos shows them enjoying Aussie racer Daniel Ricciardo's Blue Coast Beer.

He's also a producer at Digital Eclipse, a studio known for its interactive documentaries and preservation-forward game collections.

Recent standout projects include Tetris Forever, which explores the iconic puzzle game through 15 playable classic games from the game's history, and an accurate recreation of the first version of Tetris on the Electronika 60 computer.

Basically, Scanlon is living every video game nerd's dream.

In 2024, Scanlon launched another podcast called I Think It's About with his wife, Sara.

The premise is simple. One of them describes what they think a movie is about based solely on the title, and the other corrects them. It's a cozy, low-stakes concept that leans into their shared love of film and occasional confusion about it.

He's also active on Twitch, where he uses his lingering internet recognition for good. Scanlon has raised tens of thousands of dollars for the National MS Society through annual Bike MS rides.

In his own words, "If this GIF has ever brought you joy in the past, I humbly ask you to consider making a donation to the National MS Society. It would mean a lot to me and to those I know affected by the disease."

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For the full history of the Blinking White Guy, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information. To see the rest of our Where Are They Now series, you can find them all here. Stay tuned for next week's editorial!

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