Why The Fuck Everything Cost Money

About

Why The Fuck Everything Cost Money? is a caption widely associated with an image of a Black child flexing angrily. Though the image itself originally came from a Vine video, it ultimately became more popularly associated with the caption, and both the image and caption have been edited in various ways in memes.

Origin

Between 2013 and 2014, an unknown Vine user uploaded a video in which a Black child is very upset, while a voice off-screen asks "What's wrong with you bro? What the heck. You trippin br, you Trippin!" A copy of the Wine was uploaded to YouTube on March 16th, 2014 by user Richie Parker, gaining over 99,000 views in ten years (shown below).^[1]

Spread

The image of the child saw infrequent use as a Reaction Image between 2014 and 2017. At some point prior to March 30th, 2017, the image was paired with the caption "Why The Fuck Everything Cost Money?" This specific image macro was shared by the account @w0rldstarhlphop^[2] on Twitter on that date.^[2]

The image has been frequently paired with edits of the original caption that usually turn it into a wholesome meme. For example, on August 5th, 2017, Tumblr user darkrai10^[4] used it to vent their frustration about being unable to choose the "best girl" in K-On!, gaining 31 notes in seven years (shown below, left). On January 10th, 2024, Redditor chaoswarriorx4 posted an edit with the boy saying "Why the fuck are you so cute" in relation to the Pixar short Piper, gaining over 2,300 points in /r/wholesomemes in three months^[3] (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References