The “I Raff I Ruse?” memes are a branch
off of the “You X You Lose” memes, where “X” can be anything like laugh, Rage,
Fap, Cry, etc. Which are a part of the Online Forum Game series. This meme first
appeared on 4chan during the summer of 2007, according to Google Insight. These
“I Raff I Ruse?” memes were usually posted in “You Laugh You Lose” threads.
This is where someone starts by posting a picture, and if you laugh, you lose
and must post another picture you think is funny to make others laugh.
Sometimes people make specific rules or themes to make it trickier for the
poster. The goal of this is to create a huge thread with many funny pictures
mostly followed by people saying that they lost. The “I Raff I Ruse?” memes are
usually posted first, or throughout thread to show people the rules, or remind
people of the rules in a comical way.
These memes always have a picture
of a stereotypical Asian man or woman. The most popular ones have the man or
woman on some type of phone. The spelling of the words Laugh and Lose go hand
in hand with the picture that the text is over. The words are spelled to
phonetically portray a stereotypical Asian accent. The way the words are
spelled wouldn’t be as funny if they did not have the picture, and the picture
would not make as much sense if the words were not spelled the way they are,
which makes the way the text is spelled and who is in the picture the most
important parts of this meme. Commonly, the person in the meme will look
confused and the text will usually be a question. A reason that Asians are
always used in this meme is that stereotypically they are angry or upset when
they don’t understand or that they don’t understand jokes, but this stereotype
could be made for any foreign race. A middle eastern would be just as confused
and not understand why if he laughs he loses, as an Asian man would.
There are also some other types of “I
Raff I Ruse” memes, but they don’t stick to the typical Asian picture behind
the text, although they spell the text the same. The phonetic spelling of the
words don’t make sense with someone in the picture that isn’t Asian, but the
pictures are usually just as funny.
I have seen similar memes like these around Tumblr, but never had an understanding what they actually meant. Finally, getting a better explanation for it makes it a lot easier to understand. Although I do not think these memes are too funny, I still see where the Asian stereotypes come from, relating to their foreign accents. I like how you incorporated other memes that have the same text, yet do not correspond to anything "Asian". What intrigues me the most is the results Google Insight gives for which countries have found the most interest in these memes. According to Google Insight, apparently interests are found mainly in Ireland and parts of Canada and Australia. That raises some questions to me as why those regions. I look forward to reading more about these memes and hopefully finding the significance of why these regions may have found these memes the most interesting. Anyways, this was definitely a great post! And I hope to hear more of an analysis of it soon.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad it gave you a clearer understand. Yea that's interesting. Maybe those countries find that sense of humor more appealing than Americans or other countries?
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting!