If you want express something along the lines of “I don’t like you,” “You’re a bad driver,” or “I don’t agree with that call, ref,” many people — and especially Americans – favor the middle finger as a way to share those feelings. The middle finger meme is just a natural extension of that sentiment. If you’re not there to give a middle finger in person, you can easily do it online with a meme.
The one-fingered salute has become an economic way to express discontent, and it manifests in a number of different memes. Go to any meme generator, and you’ll find a staggering display of variations to choose from, ranging from comic to surprising to pretty unhinged.
But perhaps the most famous of them all, known as the “middle finger kid” meme, has the additional surprise of what appears to be a young, adorable child engaging in hostility. It has its origins, as you might expect, in soccer.
How did the ‘middle finger kid’ meme start?
The “middle finger kid” meme, setting a new standard for middle finger memes, has its origins in a 2002 soccer match between Feyenoord, one of the top pro teams in the Netherlands, and Borussia Dortmund, a perennial powerhouse in Germany’s popular Bundesliga. It wasn’t just any match: It was a UEFA Cup Trophy, and passions were certainly running high for the championship game played in Feyenoord’s home stadium in Rotterdam.
Five-year-old Mikey Wilson was captured by a Reuters photographer’s lens during the game, sitting atop his father’s shoulders, wearing a Feyenoord jersey and making his feelings known. A tweet in 2015 predicted, “We all knew that Feyenoord kid would grow up some day,” and in 2022, a SPORTbible reporter tracked down Wilson and his father to learn more about that special day—and to recreate the photo.
We all knew that Feyenoord kid would grow up some day pic.twitter.com/JoLkrb1qDd
— He Played for Them? (@played_for) February 26, 2015
“I don’t remember much about it, to be honest,” Wilson told the reporter, though it was connected to Dortmund fans singing through a moment of silence for an assassinated Dutch politician. “The only thing that stayed with me is that I didn’t want make-up on my face but it happened anyway.”
Though photos from that moment were shared in the SPORTbible article, with Wilson wearing a hat, the memed photo shows him with his hat off and with blond hair showing.
Incidentally, Feyenoord won that day, bringing Wilson and his fellow fans joy.
Know Your Meme claims that though the photo began appearing online in 2008 but then gaining real traction in 2010. One popular variation put Boston Red Sox logos over the two visible logos on the shirt—Feyenoord’s badge and the logo for jersey company Kaepa. As a result, the meme also gained the additional “Yankees suck kid” nickname.
What are some other popular middle finger memes?
If a middle finger meme featuring a young child is a surprising hoot, one featuring a baby has to be even better, right? According to Know Your Meme, a “middle finger baby” meme, featuring a black-and-white photo of a baby flipping the bird, may date back as far as the 1990s, sometimes accompanied by a “F*ck milk. Got beer?” caption.
There’s also one cribbing from an anime character, which according to Know Your Meme is known as Ikuyo Kita’s Middle Finger or the “omnidirectional middle finger,” and another that features a picture of actor Finn Wolfhard, best known as Mike Wheeler in the famed Netflix series Stranger Things, showing his finger to the camera.