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Internet Culture

‘I had to grind for this view’ meme shows the value of hard work

Get that hustle.

Photo of Jay Hathaway

Jay Hathaway

i had to grind for this view

We know that the only pastime people on the internet love more than “grinding” is telling social media all about how hard they work and how richly rewarded they are for their hustle. That’s what fueled the rise of emoji-laden Student Athlete memes earlier this month, and now it’s also behind a good new meme called “I had to grind for this view.”

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The meme mocks the amateur rappers and Instagram personalities who try to portray an opulent lifestyle and frequently brag about working hard to get it. “I had to grind for this” is the common refrain of people posting photos of their nice houses, cars, and watches on social media. But here’s the meme version: He had to grind for that sweet Minecraft scenery.

had to grind for this minecraft view
mrgiveyogirlback/Instagram

The meme seems to have taken off when Instagram user mrgiveyogirlback posted the Minecraft version, which quickly spread to Reddit and Twitter. Variations are now all over Reddit’s meme communities, and speculators on r/MemeEconomy say the meme is “EXPLODING! BUY BUY BUY!”

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A lot of takes on the meme employ the video-game scenery element:

minecraft grind for this view car meme
joshua_dun/Reddit

https://twitter.com/Drewphillips__/status/843275782617292800

https://twitter.com/Wiz_Kela/status/843209666578411520

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But not all of them. Here’s a Star Wars prequel meme, playing on Obi-Wan Kenobi’s line, “It’s over, Anakin! I have the high ground!”

star wars grind for this view meme
dionstabber/Reddit

Here’s the pope DJing a sweet party:

pope I had to grind for this view meme
dionstabber/Reddit
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And here are the obligatory Hitler versions, because memers always have to be edgy:

hitler had to grind for this view
theraymon/Reddit

Perhaps the best version is the anti-meme, where the view has been replaced with the words “this view.”

grind for the words 'this view' meme
theraymon/Reddit
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Later variations subverted the original meme by flipping the “grinding” character and the scenery. Now the view is real, and the person is Minecraft: 

minecraft steve had to grind for this view
kallejoki/Reddit

The meme really took off in March, but the basic joke seems to have popped up as far back as 2015, when people were making it about the iconic Windows ’95 desktop landscape:

https://twitter.com/ReflectsTheGr8/status/675125440504340480

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And about various first-person shooter games:

Now this meme is finally mainstream, and it’s well deserved. It had to grind for this view.

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The Daily Dot