Bro explaining Anna Jay, also known as the John Silver explaining Anna Jay meme, features wrestler John Silver passionately explaining something to singer Anna Jay, who appears uncomfortable and uninterested.
The wrestlers are part of a funny addition to the larger realm of bros explaining memes. The interaction between the wrestlers has reached viral status online as many find it relatable, from one perspective or the other.
Origins of the John Silver Explaining Anna Jay meme
The moment between John Silver and Anna Jay was part of a 2021 episode of Being The Elite. The YouTube series, the entertainment arm of The Elite professional wrestling, shows their talent interacting in humorous skits.
In the sketch, Silver is drunk and babbles from one subject to another. He becomes increasingly loud, handsy, and sloppy as he goes. Jay briefly provides a sympathetic ear before her eyes start bulging out of her head. Her facial expressions betray how uncomfortable and weird she finds the situation to be. It escalates until she hits her breaking point and tries to escape the conversation.
In February 2022, X’s @good_faces_bot posted a still from the scene, in which Anna Jay appears stunned by what she hears Silver yell into her ear.
This isn’t the first time John Silver has been caught ‘bro-splaining’ to Anna Jay
John Silver was the star of a lesser version of this meme earlier in 2021. It also came during a conversation between Silver and Anna Jay in another episode.
Soon after the episode, memes about the uncomfortable conversation between the two began to pop up across wrestling corners of X.
The meme also started to bubble up again in May 2024, when the two wrestlers recreated the moment at a wedding.
The original Bro Explaining meme
Many will recognize the original Bro Explaining meme, which pairs captions with a photograph of a man in an Astros t-shirt speaking to a visibly bored blonde woman in a sports arena, his hand grasping the back of her neck.
The photo, taken during a baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and Houston Astros on June 7, 2011, has come to definitively represent the idea of “mansplaining” in meme form.