One of the most common, appropriate adverbs attached to the word “horny” is “painfully.” It makes sense why — often, horniness is a painful state, both spiritually and physically. Particularly when it’s directed through the internet, and not properly requited, it can feel almost torturously restraining. Save for dealing with it by, you know, jerking off, there’s nothing to do but dig your nails into yourself, clench your teeth and sweat. This is precisely what the “horny grip” meme conveys.
The horny grip meme is an image in the style of the classic MS Paint rage-face memes that dominated internet culture in the early 2010s. It features your basic black-outlined character, eyes bold and attentive, mouth a straight line, sweating profusely. He’s seated with his hands on his lap, but an image next to him zooms in on one hand, revealing its bulging veins and nails that draw blood from the thigh. This agonizing restriction has become known as the “horny grip” meme, suggesting that such self-inflicted bloodshed is an attempt at dealing with arousal.
According to KnowYourMeme, details of its original meaning are unknown, though it first appeared on Tumblr in 2018. Over the last four years, it’s been known predominantly as horny grip, but can sometimes be used to refer to other emotions like nervousness, too. On Twitter, people often use it in reference to someone they find hot, with the subject mainly being anime characters and K-pop stars. Sometimes, the meme itself isn’t actually shown, but “horny grip meme” is mentioned to evoke its image. It’s also been used to make fun of what people find erotic. For example, one popular use implied that National Geographic magazine acts like the horny grip meme whenever they see a person of color with light-colored eyes.
Notably, it’s not the only grip to appear in the meme lexicon. The Arthur’s Fist meme, while intended usually to show anger, similarly showcases the power of the hand in conveying emotion. There’s a sense of restraint and the bottling of feelings in Arthur’s fist that matches the horny grip. In a different manner, the meme KnowYourMeme calls “Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class,” where a guy is seen clenching his face so hard that his veins in his forehead look like they’re about to burst, offers a comparable tone. Both are suggestive of a feverish attempt to control one’s body and emotions, to the point of pain.
Along with Arthur’s Fist and Guy in Class memes, the horny grip belongs to a broader dialogue of the way we all deal with ourselves. More often than not, we don’t want to feel the way we do. Try as we might to push our feelings down, our body reveals the truth. But at this point, do we really need to punish ourselves for our online horniness in this way? We’ve all been that horny before, even horny on main. So save yourself the blood and bulging thumb veins and just embrace it.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
