Where is "Stop it, get some help" from?

A 1987 anti-drug public service announcement featuring Michael Jordan, sponsored by McDonald's, which aired on ABC on May 26, 1987.

How is the meme used?

As a deadpan reaction to behaviour the poster finds embarrassing or excessive — an instruction to stop, rather than sympathy.

When did it become a meme?

2016. An isolated clip in April took 220,000 views, and a June 7, 2016 Vine took 2.8 million views in under two months.

Why does the delivery work?

Jordan reads the line flatly, somewhere between concerned and exasperated, which keeps the joke dry rather than aggressive when applied to something trivial.

Stop It, Get Some Help meaning, origin & examples

Origin

The clip is from a 1987 anti-drug public service announcement. Michael Jordan — then in his third NBA season and already the sport’s biggest star — appeared in a one-minute spot sponsored by McDonald’s, which aired on ABC on May 26, 1987 during a special programme about drug use.

Jordan speaks directly to camera, urging young viewers not to take drugs, and closes with a flat, slightly awkward instruction:

“Stop it. Get some help.”

The delivery is the reason it survived. It is not warm, not encouraging, and not really advice — it is a man reading a line, in a tone that lands somewhere between concerned and exasperated.

What it means / how it’s used

The clip is used to react to behaviour the poster considers embarrassing or excessive. It is not sympathy; it is a deadpan instruction to stop doing whatever is being shown and seek professional assistance.

Its uses:

Reacting to cringeworthy content.
Responding to an obsession the poster finds excessive.
Community self-mockery about a shared preoccupation.
Anything sufficiently strange to warrant intervention.

The register matters. Because the source is a genuine public-service message about a serious subject, applying it to something trivial produces exactly the disproportion the joke needs — and the flatness of Jordan’s delivery keeps it dry rather than aggressive.

How it spread

The clip resurfaced in 2016. An isolated version uploaded to YouTube on April 23, 2016 took over 220,000 views within four months, framed explicitly as a tool for use in arguments.

Its breakout came on June 7, 2016, when a Vine paired the soundbite with cringeworthy footage and took 2.8 million views, 74,000 likes and 2,000 comments in under two months. The hashtag #getsomehelp followed, and through June to August 2016 dozens of remixes and compilations circulated across Vine and YouTube.

The format is essentially a sound, not an image — its use depends on the audio being cut in at the right moment, which is why it thrived on Vine and later on TikTok.

Notable examples & variations

Vine and short-form video edits with the audio cut in.
Still images of Jordan mid-line as a reaction.
Text-only use of the phrase.
Compilations applying it to a run of clips.
Recreations by other people delivering the line.

Legacy / cultural impact

The meme is a small case study in the afterlife of public-service advertising. PSAs are made to be memorable and are usually forgotten; occasionally one survives for decades because its earnestness reads, later, as unintentionally funny.

Jordan himself has been a durable meme presence across several formats — the Crying Jordan face, “and I took that personally” from The Last Dance, and this — which makes him one of the very few people to be independently memed across three separate decades of his own career.