“You said normal girls were boring” is a line from the Taylor Swift song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” that went viral as a meme soon after its release. The song is track 14 on Swift’s latest album The Tortured Poets Department and seems to express the singer’s disappointment with an ex-boyfriend.
Of all the lines that stood out, “you said normal girls were boring” was enough to inspire a meme that spread across the Swiftie fandom and beyond.
You said normal girls were boring
But you were gone by the morning
You kicked out the stage lights, but you’re still performing
What is the “you said normal girls were boring” meme?
Not long after the Tortured Poets Department album was released on April 19, 2024, fans started taking this particular line from the song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and changing what followed to describe why someone they were dating might be gone in the morning.
These explanations for why someone might dump them typically involve some kind of deep interest or obsession with a form of media such as a TV show, a celebrity, or Taylor Swift herself. Others expanded the meme to talk about personal issues they might have that make dating difficult, such as chronic illness.
“You said normal girls were boring” meme origins
Taylor Swift is well known for penning devastating breakup songs, and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is no exception. In June 2016, the hashtag #IDumpedTaylorSwiftBecause spread on Twitter following her breakup with DJ Calvin Harris due to her storied reputation of going through unsuccessful relationships.
The line from “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” isn’t even the only song that has inspired a recent Swift-themed meme. The statement “you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me” from the track “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” took off first, likely because of the sheer drama of it all.
Swifties enjoyed the line “you said normal girls were boring, but you were gone by the morning” so much that they started by posting the lyrics on social media alongside images or footage of people screaming, sobbing, smashing things with blunt instruments, and other highly dramatic and emotional acts.
The actual meme derived from this part of the song didn’t emerge until the very end of May. Twitter user @jegulusmoony posted one of the first popular examples on May 28, writing “‘you said normal girls were boring’ but this is literally me when character ai is down” with a gif compilation of people freaking out and crying.
Who is “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”?
After the new album’s release in April, Swifies wasted no time in speculating who this very tiny man might be.
While Swift did not name the culprit in the song directly, most have come to a consensus that he is none other than the singer-songwriter, record producer, and lead vocalist of The 1975 Matty Healy. Healy and Swift dated from April to June in 2023, a period which includes the early summer, and the chorus from the song in question goes like this:
And I don’t even want you back, I just want to know
If rusting my sparkling summer was the goal
There appear to be other clues in the song that Healy is the target of Swift’s ire, including a reference to a “Jehovah’s Witness suit,” which is so Healy’s style.
Meme examples
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