Meaning
What does Hand Reaching Out mean?
The Hand Reaching Out or also known as Screen Reaching Out is an unofficial emoji with bloodshot eyes and with a scarily exhausted facial expression.
The edited emoji appears to be reaching out of the screen with human-like hands, hence the name of the image.
It is part of the so-called “Cursed emojis/expressions”, which refers to a set of images of non-Unicode emoticons and also is a variation of “Stressed emojis”.
Origin
What's the origin of Hand Reaching Out?
The exact origin of the meme is unknown.
However, on August 8th, 2019 the user salad.snake posted an edited video of the song “Hamburger Cheeseburger Big Mac Whopper” as its background music.
The video featured the “Hand Reaching Out” emoji and also several other “cursed expressions”. In two months the post received positive feedback and 112,000 views.
Spread & Usage
How did Hand Reaching Out spread?
The video inspired many to create their own humorous post featuring the emoji, and it rapidly spread through various social media sites, such as Twitter, Reddit and also on the image board 4chan.
For example, on July 1st, 2019 a Twitter user FloPerfecto posted a clip of the character Rika Furude from the visual novel Higurashi When They Cry.
In the video a hand reaches through the screen, passing the character. This short clip gained over 116,000 views and around 10,000 likes since it was uploaded.
Over the years the picture became popularly used as a reaction image on Twitter.
Prodding the further spread of the meme, user PeachyKneeSocks posted a meme with the picture of the “Hand Reaching Out” emoji and it gained over 99,700 retweets and 368,000 likes in two months.
External resources
- Know Your Meme – Screen-Reaching Hand / Emoji