You Mean Trolling?

About

You Mean Trolling? is a phrasal template that is used to mispresent various illegal or heinous acts as trolling a certain category. The format gained notable spread as a part of new-wave Trollface memes in early 2021.

Origin

On November 8th, 2020, Redditor ComplexDespacito posted a new wave Trollface meme captioned "Sexual harassment? What? You mean trolling?" The post received over 6,000 upvotes in the /r/okbuddyretard^[1] subreddit in six months (shown below).

Spread

In the following months, the image saw viral spread through reposts on social media. For example, on February 9th, 2021, Redditor^[2] LowEffortMeat reposted a cropped version of the meme, with the post gaining over 26,900 upvotes in five months.

On March 13th, 2021, Redditor ogsnaps posted the first derivative version of the meme, with the post gaining over 23,900 upvotes in /r/okbuddyretard^[3] in four months (shown below). A March 14th repost by iFunny^[4] user treefiddy_and_ahunnid received over 18,900 smiles on the app in the same period.

In the following days, the format gained popularity in the /r/okbuddyretard subreddit. For example, on March 13th, Redditor^[5] codname18 posted a version that received over 26,200 upvotes in four months (shown below, left). On March 18th, Redditor^[6] LilFazeTyrone posted a version that gained over 8,700 upvotes in the same period (shown below, right).

In late June 2021, a version captioned "Ruining my life?? You mean trolling myself?" went viral (authorship unconfirmed, shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References