Overview

The Ninjamuffin Palestine Joke and Newgrounds and Twitter Likes Controversy refers to backlash towards Friday Night Funkin' developer ninja_muffin99 after he both made what was considered by some to be an inappropriate joke about Palestine in regards to the 2023 Hamas vs. Israel Conflict and liked and favorited several pieces of rule 34 fan art, including aged-up artwork of underage anime characters on Twitter and Newgrounds. The controversy began in late December 2023.

History

Palestine Joke Controversy

Ninja_muffin99, one of the developers of Friday Night Funkin', has previously been accused of being racist and transphobic for past tweets, which he apologized for through an X^[1] post in 2021, claiming he was young and just trying to be shocking.

On December 19th, 2023, ninja_muffin99 had a now-deleted exchange on X with @JohnnyUtahNG beginning with ninja_muffin99 writing, "Does johnnyutah say free Palestine?" Johnny replied, "and i was gonna buy you a steak tonight… oh look there it goes the free steak vanished" and ninja_muffin99 replied, "ok ok!!! no freeing palestine!!! steak pleasies steak pleasies🥺!" (shown below).

Later that day, ninja_muffin99 posted to X,^[2] "No memes no jokes no bullshit, do very strongly believe Palestine should be free, and what Isreal has been doing is fucked, horrifying, and heartbreaking," garnering over 8,900 likes in a day. That day, several X^[3][4] users, including @Th4t0n3Y (shown below) and @deeznutvinecomp reposted the exchange between ninja_muffin and Johnnyutah, criticizng ninja_muffin99 for joking about the conflict at all, garnering over 700 likes and 1,200 likes in a day respectively.

Twitter / Newgrounds Likes Controversy

Later that day on December 19th, 2023, X^[5] user @Gelzazz quote-reposted a meme about the Palestine joke with a screenshot of one of ninja_muffin99's X likes, showing that he liked a suggestive piece of fan art of character Hatsune Miku, who is meant to be 16, garnering over 1,200 likes in a day (shown below, left). Later that day, X^[6] user @SMJ0fficial posted a similar screenshot of another piece of Hatsune Miku art, garnering around 300 likes in a day. X^[7] user @Gelzazz reposted the post, writing, "2 million for suggestive Hatsune Miku bro please work on your game 😭," garnering over 3,500 likes in a day (shown below, right).

Later that day, X^[8] user @spiderfan4635 posted, "You think that's all? WRONG" and shared several screenshots from ninjamuffin99's Newgrounds^[9] favorites, highlighting numerous pieces of artwork throughout 14 screenshots that he liked that feature either minor characters, animals and that relate to other taboo topics, garnering over 2,700 likes in a day (examples shown below).

Ninjamuffin's Response

On December 21st, 2023, @ninja_muffin99 posted a tongue-in-cheek response to the controversy to X,^[15] sharing a meme of Pickle Rick with guns pointed at him, writing, "my f’ing life right now," garnering over 8,100 likes in a day (shown below).

Online Reactions

Leaving the Friday Night Funkin' Community Announcements

The controversies resulted in some well-known and amateur modders, fan artists and members of the Friday Night Funkin' community announcing their departure from the community. For example, on December 19th, 2023, YouTuber^[10] and modder awe9037 made a community post announcing their departure that garnered over 1,500 likes in a day (shown below). Several modders and community members announced their departure on X^[11][12] between the 19th and 20th, including X user @zvsaba_wut, who wrote, "i’m officially leaving the fnf community. not because of ninjamuffin’s actions, but because of y’all’s stupid ass reaction to it."

Defense for Ninja_Muffin99

While ninja_muffin99 gained substantial backlash over the controversies, some came to his defense. On December 20th, /u/ZealousidealEgg7855 made a post to /r/FridayNightFunkin^[13] writing, "people are canceling ninjamuffin because he… liked slightly suggestive art of anime characters…" garnering over 180 upvotes in under a day. On the same day, /u/LSDreamYeen made a post to /r/FridayNightFunkin on Reddit^[14] titled "Ninjamuffin 'drama' pisses me off..," explaining how they believe the drama is overblown, garnering over 90 upvotes in under a day (shown below).

Search Interest

External References