A hold my beer meme featuring characters from the television series Game of Thrones. Tormond Giantsbane (played by Kristofer Hivju), a large, adult male, claims that he killed a giant at age ten. Lyanna Mormont (played by Bella Ramsey), a small girl, responds with “hold my beer.” (Lyanna kills a giant in spectacular fashion during the penultimate episode of the series.)
7 January 2021
The phrase hold my beer is used as punchline to a joke in which someone has just done something incredibly stupid or spectacularly failed at something and someone else says “hold my beer,” implying that they are about one-up them with an even stupider stunt. The implication is that alcohol has impaired their judgment. (Sorry, jokes are never funny when explained.)
Hold my beer gets its start as part of an old joke making affectionate fun of people from the American South, who are stereotypically assumed to regularly engage in such behavior. The earliest appearance of the joke that I have found (it is likely much older, as such jokes invariably are) is from an 18 May 1995 Washington Post article:
Meanwhile, Spectator editor in chief R. Emmett Tyrell Jr. entertained his audience of 450 with a rendition of “famous last words of a redneck.” To wit: “Hey y’all, watch this!”
Comedian Jeff Foxworthy, who has made a living off jokes about rednecks, has used the joke, and had a large role in popularizing it.
Somewhere along the way, someone added hold my beer to the joke. So, we have this from Jim Hightower’s 2003 book Thieves in High Places:
How optimistic are we Texans? The U.S. government did a little-known study during the past five years, installing black boxes in hundreds of pickup trucks. The idea was to get data on truck crashes, like they do when airplanes go down. They found that in forty-nine of the fifty states, the last words of drivers in the majority of crashes were: "Oh, shit!" But the researchers were surprised to find that in the vast majority of pickup crashes in Texas, the last words were: "Hey, y'all hold my beer and watch this!"
As the joke became universally recognized, the watch this was dropped, leaving just hold my beer.
A tweet from 26 January 2007 uses the phrase hold my beer, but without any context, so it’s hard to tell what is meant. Later that year, on 14 November 2007, another tweet uses the phrase, including a link to a BBC story about a man who injured himself trying to loosen a lug nut with a shotgun:
Belmont Club Hold My Beer: The BBC describes the unsuccessful efforts of a man to loo[sen lug nut].
(The BBC story does not use the phrase; it only appears in the tweet linking to it.)
The /r/holdmybeer subreddit launched on 20 November 2012, dedicated to similar tales of epic fails.
Finally, an entry for the phrase appeared in Urbandictionary.com on 15 September 2013:
hold my beer
(1) The act of giving up one's alcoholic beverage temporarily to attempt a stunt he or she has never ventured.
(2) Ones personal death wish fueled by ignorance.Person: "Omg that guy tight-roped Niagara Falls"
Drunk Guy: If you think that's somethin', just "hold my beer"Person: Did he just do a double backflip?
DG: double backflip you say..hold my beerPerson: That guy just drank 30 beer
DG: Bitch gimmie my beer
By this time, the phrase was firmly established in internet vocabulary and had become the stuff of memes.
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Sources:
@msitarzewski, Twitter, Jan 26, 2007.
@wretchardthecat, Twitter, Nov 14, 2007.
Grove, Lloyd. “The Candidate Reconnoiters.” Washington Post, 18 May 1995, C5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Hightower, Jim. Thieves in High Places. New York: Viking, 2003, 147. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Hold My Beer.” Know Your Meme, 2020. https://knowyourmeme.com/
“hold my beer.” Urbandictionary.com, 15 September 2013.
“Man Hurt Using Gun to Change Tyre.” BBC News, 13 November 2007.
“‘What were the Aggie’s last words?’ / ‘Hey y’all, watch this!’(joke).” BarryPopik.com, 5 September 2011.
Photo credit: Images from Game of Thrones (television series), HBO Entertainment, 2011–19; fair use of copyrighted images to illustrate the topic under discussion.