"Holy Airball" Slang and TikTok Trend Explained

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Some people take shots that land so far off target you can only call them an airball. TikTokers are using the phrase in a new trend to show just how off some people's assumptions are.   For more information, visit: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/holy-airball  Check out our new MEME STORE: https://thememestore.com/  Subscribe to our channel to learn more about trending memes, hear interviews from meme personalities and more! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbrPqq29C9Q_TQP7OFFRzcw?sub_confirmation=1  #meme #memes #memesvideos

Transcript

00:00Sometimes in life, like in basketball, we take shots that just completely miss the target.

00:04We're not talking close but no cigar off the backboard shots, we're talking about

00:08holy f***ing airballs. Recently, TikTokers have been sharing about these types of experiences

00:13in a trend that will leave you baffled at just how off some people's aim is.

00:17So how did the holy airball trend start? One of the earliest known uses of the term

00:21holy airball to describe someone shooting their shot in a way that was a very obvious miss

00:26was posted to the r slash zargorian galaxacy subreddit in August 2024.

00:30User literallyerror used the phrase to caption a screenshot from a comment on a girl's photo

00:35reading, are you John? Cause I've never seen a girl like this before. And yikes. Yeah,

00:39I sort of wish that comment was John Cena so we wouldn't have seen it. The user also included

00:44a photoshopped image of Steph Curry trying to make a shot to earth from the moon to really

00:48illustrate their point. But if you want to get technical about it, that isn't actually an

00:51airball because there's no air in space. The phrase holy airball garnered viral spread over

00:55the following months, especially on TikTok. On December 8th, 2024, TikToker JerkXGita posted

01:01an edit captioned holy airball, showcasing this kid that definitely regrets taking someone's

01:06advice to go for it. The repeated rejections are spliced between clips of basketball players

01:10shooting literal airballs, garnering the video over 4.6 million views in five months. In May

01:152025, TikTokers began a slideshow trend set to the song Soul Survivor by GZ, in which they share

01:21anecdotes about times when they or someone else metaphorically missed a shot, like a painful

01:26misunderstanding, downplaying, or other social mistake involving some sort of incorrect assumption.

01:31A lot of the earliest versions of the trend focused on cars, with guys showing off cars

01:35that were nicer than what a girl might have thought. Some users would take an ironic approach

01:39to this, like TikToker VQ Panther, who posted a version showing his Toyota Prius as an example

01:44of a car that the girl missed out on riding around in, garnering over a million views in four

01:48days. As the trend evolved, it started to feature more and more women creators posting about things

01:52guys have incorrectly assumed about them, like this woman who doesn't work at a boutique,

01:57or this woman whose uniform isn't scrubbed. Some versions focused on incorrect predictions

02:01about the future, or on plans that seemingly went very awry.

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