About

Chill Guy Vietnamese Magazine Cover Plagiarism Hoax refers to fake claims that meme character Chill Guy, created by artist Phillip Banks in October 2023, was plagiarized from a cover of a Vietnamese children's magazine. While the cover of the issue depicting a dog with Chill Guy's face and a boy with Chill Guy's body is real, it comes from a December 2024 issue of the magazine. As the allegation went viral, Banks refuted it on social media.

Origin

On December 24th, 2024, Redditor Kaito8008 posted a photograph of a cover for issue 883 (issue 52 of year 2024) of Vietnamese children's magazine Học Trò Cười (viet. "Laughing Children")^[1] with the false claim "Chill guy was originally came from Thailand" in the /r/CHILLGUYCOIN^[2] subreddit (shown below). The cover depicted a boy wearing the same outfit as Chill Guy and standing in the same pose, and his dog which had Chill Guy's face and color. The post received over 170 upvotes in the subreddit in two days.

On December 25th, 2024, Redditor Informal-System-4614 reposted the image in the /r/blursedimages^[3] subreddit, where it received over 6,400 upvotes in one day.

On December 25th, 2024, Twitter / X^[4] user @onchainbookie posted an image search result for the image posted in the subreddit, mistaking the creation date of /r/blusrsedimages subreddit (May 11th, 2018) for the date when the image was posted, and claiming that Phillip Banks plagiarized the character from the cover. The post (shown below) received over 3,400 likes in one day, received a community note, and has since been deleted.

The image comes from the cover of issue 883 (week 52 of year 2024) of Vietnamese children's magazine Học Trò Cười (full cover art shown below).

Spread

On December 25th, 2024, Facebook^[6] page Low Quality Content reposted the image, which received over 25,000 reactions and 6,100 shares in one day, with multiple users assuming that Chill Guy plagiarized the character and not vice versa. Later that day, Facebook^[7] page Psychological Memefare posted the image with the caption "When you're so used to the meme so the original image looks odd". The post (shown below) received over 12,000 reactions and 2,800 shares in one day.

Later on December 25th, Chill Guy artist Phillip Banks (@PhillipBankss) refuted the allegations in a series of posts on X^[8][9] (shown below).

Additionally, Banks later asked his followers not to harass the magazine over repurposing Chill Guy.

Search Interest

External References