Tighten Staring

About

Tighten Staring refers to an image macro of Hal Stewart / Tighten from Megamind staring, often with a black filter with the song Never Forgive Me, Never Forget Me from the game Silent Hill by Akira Yamaoka. Though the image of Tighten staring had been used in a similar fashion to Traumatized Mr. Incredible for months beforehand, the the trend of using Silent Hill music started on iFunny by BiDrawer, where it became a skinwalker video meme engine.

Origin

The first recorded usage of Tighten Stare as a meme came on May 31st, 2021, when the Facebook^[7] account Ivory FuccZucc III posted a meme using it which acquired 3,500 shares in six months. He uses it as an addon to his status update, which is him saying how he will be staring at girls during the upcoming sundress season (shown below).

The first time it was used in as a meme template was on Instagram^[5] by the page Engenhiero Sincero, which received 10,000 likes in five months. While in Brazilian Portuguese, translates to 'when the building collapses and you remember that you were the only one who signed the project' having it fall closer in line to Traumatized Mr. Incredible than it's later incarnation does (shown below).

Months later, on November 3rd, 2021, iFunny^[1] user BiDrawer posted the format picture with a black filter with the caption "Me in the woods tightly gripping my sidearm Staring down an entity that claims to be my friend after hearing the screams of complete utter disembowelment". The post gained over 17,800 likes in 4 days (shown below).

Spread

In the following days, the image macro has been reposted and been added by other captions. On November 3rd, 2021, iFunny^[2] user ZombieKevB4 posted a version with the caption "Me watching the home intruder crawls to the door with half of his body gone". The video gained 67 likes in 4 days. (shown below).

On November 5th, 2021, iFunny^[3] user YeahThatHappened posted a version with the caption "Me when my friend morphs into Skinwalker" and edits Tighten 's eyes moving to the camera. The video gained 205 likes in 2 days (shown below).

On November 5th, 2021, Funnyjunk user Halibard^[6] uploaded a music-less meme that uses the darker version and takes it back to it's roots as a single image reaction (shown below).

On November 7th, 2021, the meme was covered by Lessons In Meme Culture. The video^[4] gained over 105,428 views in less then 24 hours (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References