“Is that meme ever gonna die?”: Woman featured in Jimmy Tatro skit explains how it came to be

If you’ve scrolled the internet in the last decade, you may have seen a popular reaction meme from Jimmy Tatro’s college sketches. Avery Wagner (@itsaverywagner), who was featured in the image, recently shared the full story of how it came to be on TikTok.

From a college party to YouTube content

Back in 2012, Wagner was a sophomore at the University of Arizona. At the time, Jimmy Tatro and Christian Pierce were classmates who regularly created YouTube sketches.

She recalled, “Christian and Jimmy used to write all of their YouTube sketches together. They would write, produce, edit, direct all the things while we were in college. Which was so insane, knowing how the sausage was made, that they were going to class, and then they were also like literally doing like a full production company while we were all in school. It was like absolutely mind-blowing to me.”

@itsaverywagner Replying to @nev marie #greenscreen ♬ 30 Minutes of Silence – Silenzio

She was friends with Pierce, who casually invited her to a party that doubled as a filming session. “He texted me one afternoon and was like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna shoot a couple things at our house before we have a party. Do you wanna come over later for a party? But if you come, you have to be in this sketch.’ And I was like, ‘Sure, absolutely, no problem.’”

According to her, the group took the shoot seriously. Despite being a college house party, the production had multiple cameras and sound equipment. She admitted that she had already been drinking beforehand, so filming felt even more surreal.

How the sketch created the meme

The video, titled “Don’t Stop the Music,” is still available on YouTube. The setup placed Tatro and Pierce at a party when Tatro delivered a shocking line. Right at that moment, someone yanked the aux cord, leaving the punchline hanging in silence.

She explained, “That reaction moment is when the aux cord gets pulled out of the plug, our group looks at him, ‘What the hell?’” The meme itself came from the thumbnail of that very video, capturing her reaction in the split second of silence.

Once filming wrapped, the scene turned back into a real party. At the time, no one involved expected the sketch to outlive their college years. Yet the meme has resurfaced online repeatedly for more than a decade.

“So that is the origin story. I cannot believe that that meme has become what it is,” she said, adding, “I cannot believe that it’s circulated around the internet for this long, and I think we’ll be memorialized forever. I don’t really know. So yeah, that’s the story. There it is, everybody.”