I See What You Did There

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I See What You Did There
I See What You Did There
Aliases	Si, Claro
Physical description
Species	Human
Gender	Male

About

"I See What You Did There", sometimes shortened as ICWYDT or ISWYDT, is a phrase typically found online either in comments or captions for image macros. Depending on its tone, it can convey a condescending response to a banal joke, a genuine admiration for another person’s wit or a threat akin to “I know what you did.”

Origin

The expression had been used in pop culture previous to the internet, first seen in a March 1996 episode of the television comedy Friends titled “The One Where Dr. Ramoray Dies.” In the scene, Joey (played by Matt LeBlanc) is explaining to Phoebe (played by Lisa Kudrow) how he writes his own lines on the television show he works on. He tells her that he took the original line "If we don't get this woman to a hospital, she's going to die" and changed it to "If this woman doesn't get to a hospital, she's not gonna live." Realizing he just rephrased the script and did not do any actual writing, Phoebe responds with "I see what you did there" as a method of patronizing him.

Online, one of the earliest archived uses of the phrase appeared on the Ultimate Ju-jitsu Forum on July 18, 2003 when a member posted a joke about a Jujitsu martial arts center named the Boy Club, asking if it was a reference to the blue corner of a ju-jitsu mat, to which another poster responded with “ah ha, i see what you did there.”

Spread

“I See What You Did There” has been used on a variety of topical message boards between 2003 and 2007, including hobby forum ilXor, the Killer Movies community, and the Newgrounds forums.

The Rage Face

As early as in August 2011, the phrase became paired with a reaction face that had been circulating on 4chan since that February, with the earliest known instance posted by Tumblr user dyselxia in a joke about juice beverages.