If you’ve spent much time on the internet in the last few weeks, you’ve probably encountered Dat Boi. The Boi in question is a unicycling frog, sometimes in GIF form, sometimes static, usually accompanied by some variant on the following text.
“Here come Dat Boi!” “O shit waddup!”
But where did the unicycling frog come from? Why is he Dat Boi? What does it all mean. New York Magazine has attempted to get to the bottom of it. It turns out that the meme is actually the collision of two, less popular memes. The text has been circulating on Tumblr for nearly a year, while the frog comes from Animation Factory, which is a kind of GIF clearinghouse.
And why do people love it so much? Well, that’s obvious.
Dat Boi is funny because the frog does not look like the kind of person you’d call “Dat Boi.” He’s a frog, and he’s on a unicycle. And yet, his relaxed demeanor projects the kind of imperturbable mellowness you would expect in someone called Dat Boi. This is about as good an explanation as I can muster.
There’s something about calling a frog on a unicycle Dat Boi that’s just hilarious.
That said, it looks like we should enjoy Dat Boi while we can. If this Daily Dot article is anything to go by, we’ve already reached peak Dat Boi and the backlash is coming.