Well Yes, But Actually No

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About

"Well Yes, But Actually No" is a misquoted line of dialog by the character Pirate Captain from the British-American animated short film So You Want to Be a Pirate!. Starting in February 2019, the screen capture of the scene paired with the misquote has been used as an reaction image.

Origin

On August 28th, 2012, British-American animated stop motion comedy film The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (marketed as The Pirates! Band of Misfits in the United States) was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States.^[1] The film was accompanied with an 18-minute stop motion short film So You Want to Be a Pirate!. In one scene of the short, character Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant) is asked whether his beard is luxuriant due to shouting, to which he answers "good guess, but actually no", which may be misheard as "well yes, but actually no" due to pronunciation.

- A lot of people would put my success down to my luxuriant beard. But! Do you know what I put my beard's success down to?
- Shouting?!
- Good guess, but actually no.

Spread

On February 13th, 2019, Redditor^[2] GarryBoldwater posted a misquoted image macro based on the scene to /r/HistoryMemes subreddit (shown below, left). The post gained over 130 upvotes in two days. In one hour, GarryBoldwater posted several other memes utilizing the macro to /r/HistoryMemes^[3], /r/memes^[4] and /r/MemeEconomy^[5] subreddit, with the /r/MemeEconomy post (shown below, right) gaining over 23,000 upvotes in two days.

Britain and France: So you'll take the Sudetenland, but won't annex any more of Czechoslovakia? Germany: Well yes, but actually no

Me: There's still hope that my dad will come back Dad: Well yes, but actually no

In the following days, multiple posts based on the macro appeared in /r/dankmemes^[6] and /r/HistoryMemes^[7] subreddits. On February 14th, news outlet Stayhipp posted a collection of "Well Yes, But Actually No" memes.^[8]