And I Took That Personally

Origin

The line comes from The Last Dance, the ten-part documentary about Michael Jordan and the 1997–98 Chicago Bulls, which aired on ESPN from April 19 to May 17, 2020. Released during widespread lockdowns with no live sport to compete with, it became one of the most-watched documentaries in ESPN’s history.

Its most quoted recurring beat is Jordan’s method of generating motivation. Again and again he describes a slight — a rival’s comment, a snub, a perceived lack of respect — and concludes, flatly: “And I took that personally.” The documentary makes clear how minor some of these slights were, and how completely he weaponised them.

What it means / how it’s used

The phrase describes a wildly disproportionate response to a trivial offence, delivered with total sincerity. It is used to frame petty grudges as noble motivation.

Its comedy comes from the gap between Jordan’s stakes and the poster’s. Jordan built championship runs on perceived disrespect; the meme applies that machinery to a colleague’s email tone, a friend’s offhand comment, or a video game opponent’s emote.

Two common structures:

• A minor slight, followed by the line and an absurdly escalated response.
• A “nobody:” setup mocking how often the phrase recurs in the documentary itself.

How it spread

The meme was born the day the series ended. On May 17, 2020 — the night of the finale — a Twitter user posted a joke about how many times Jordan had said the line across the ten episodes. That post kicked off a wave, and within days the still of Jordan mid-interview, captioned with the phrase, was circulating as a standard reaction image.

The timing was ideal. The entire audience finished the series on the same night, so the joke landed on a fully synchronised viewership — the same dynamic that drives memes out of live sport and finale episodes rather than ongoing shows.

Through mid-2020 it spread from Twitter to Instagram and Reddit, and it was widely adopted by sports accounts and athletes themselves, who used it earnestly as often as ironically.

Notable examples & variations

• “Nobody: / Michael Jordan:” constructions about the documentary’s repetition.
• Everyday versions applying the line to workplace and domestic slights.
• Sports uses, often sincere, about genuine competitive motivation.
• Video versions using the actual clip with the pause before the line.
• Crossovers pairing the still with other reaction formats.

Legacy / cultural impact

The Last Dance produced several enduring quotables, and this is the one that fully entered general speech. “I took that personally” is now used in ordinary conversation with no reference to basketball intended.

The phrase also captured something people found genuinely revealing about elite competition — the documentary presented Jordan’s grudge-collecting as both the engine of his greatness and a slightly unsettling trait, and the meme preserves that ambiguity. It is funny because the poster is overreacting, and it works because Jordan, evidently, was not joking.