Melman says San Diego

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About

Melman Says San Diego refers to a clip from the animated film Madagascar in which the character Melman speculates that the group has landed on a beach in San Diego. The scene has inspired a popular reaction image meant to depict doubt and suspiscion.

Origin

The clip originates from the animated film Madagascar which was produced by Dreamworks Animation and released in 2005.^[1] The scene depicts the main cast bewildered after washing up on a beach. The giraffe character, Melman, states that they are most likely in San Diego, specifically the San Diego Zoo, as he goes on to point out how most of the beach's features were most likely props meant to simulate a real beach.

Following the film's release, this particular clip would not receive widespread popularity for another 13 years. On July 30th, 2018, YouTube user Loafrez posted an edited clip of the scene where he makes Melmen say Sans instead of San Diego, making a brief Megalovania reference. This video garnered over 1.3 million views.^[2]

Spread

It wasn't until June of 2019 that the unedited clip would be posted to YouTube by user Rodrick in a video titled: "Melman says san diego." This video received almost three hundred thousand views.^[3] This clip would go on to inspire various different parodies, which typically involved replacing "San Diego" with other popular memes.

Why Are You White?

Why Are You White? or Why Are You (X)? is an image macro that derives from a still frame from the scene where Melman says San Diego. In these images, the top text reads "why are you" with the bottom text typically reading "white," although many variations of this meme have been created where the bottom text is replaced with other adjectives. The earliest known example of this was posted to the subreddit r/MemePiece on March 18th, 2020.^[4]

C Melman

C Melman is an image macro that became popular in the Spanish meme community. The meme consists of the capital letter "C" at the top and the name "Melman" at the bottom. The meme is sometimes shared in a video format where a man says "C Melman," followed by a distorted rendition of "In The Mood" that plays until the video ends. The earliest known video was posted by YouTube user @videosturbios4698, on March 24th, 2021, which received around 17,000 views.^[5]