Kermit Drinking Tea

Origin

The picture is Kermit the Frog calmly sipping from a glass of Lipton tea, a frame pulled from Lipton’s 2014 “Be More Tea” advertising campaign — a tie-in with the Disney film “Muppets Most Wanted.” The flagship spot, produced with visual-effects house Framestore, first aired during the Academy Awards broadcast on March 2, 2014, and follows Kermit through a chaotic, animal-filled New York City, growing serene after a cup of Lipton, all scored to Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’.” One quiet shot of Kermit raising the glass — a yellow Lipton tag dangling from it — was screenshotted and set loose online. The spot was part of a broader Muppets marketing push tied to the film’s release, and the frozen sip — poised, unbothered, caught mid-drink — proved far more useful to fans than the calming message the ad actually intended.

What it means / how it’s used

The captioned meme, almost always tagged with “But that’s none of my business,” delivers a pointed, judgmental observation about someone’s behavior and then feigns innocence right after throwing the jab. The “none of my business” line draws on a Black Twitter and AAVE turn of phrase (often “…but that’s none of my business, boo”), and the serene sipping pose reads as smug, gossipy detachment — saying the quiet part out loud, then pretending to float above the fray. That gap between shady content and calm delivery is the entire joke, which is why the same image works whether the target is an ex, a coworker, or a politician. The image also demands almost no editing skill, which lowered the barrier for anyone to fire off a quick jab and helped it saturate feeds fast.

How it spread

The format exploded in the summer of 2014, spreading through Instagram and Twitter accounts such as @kermitbelike, which churned out endless sip-and-shade captions. By that summer the image was inescapable across social feeds, and it routinely landed on year-end lists of 2014’s defining memes. Because the base image was clean and instantly recognizable, it became one of that year’s defining reaction memes and a lasting template for “throwing shade.” Its popularity helped push “tea” into wider internet use as slang for gossip, and it later shared the spotlight with a separate hooded-Kermit format, “Evil Kermit,” which emerged in 2016.

Notable examples & variations

• “So I heard [gossip]… but that’s none of my business.”
• “Tea” puns that lean on the literal cup in Kermit’s hand (spilling the tea = spilling gossip).
• Recaptions aimed at brands, politicians, and celebrities.
• Related Kermit formats, most notably the distinct “Evil Kermit” meme.

Legacy / cultural impact

Kermit sipping tea helped cement “tea” as shorthand for gossip and remains one of the most enduring “shade” reaction images on the internet. Years after the Lipton ad it was pulled from, the sip is still instantly read as a passive-aggressive mic-drop — a rare case of a commercial frame outliving the commercial itself.