Haters Gonna Hate (2009)

About

Haters Gonna Hate is a popular catchphrase used to indicate one’s complete disregard for an individual or a group’s hostile remarks addressed towards the speaker. This expression has its roots in American hip hop, but it also spawned an image macro series featuring pictures of celebrities, animals and cartoon characters strutting or posing in a conceited manner.

Origin

While not necessarily the direct progenitor of the meme, the phrase “Haters Gonna Hate” first appeared in the pop song “Playas Gon’ Play” by 3LW in the year 2000:

Earliest Known Instance

The term “Haters” first appeared on Urban Dictionary in August 2003:

Hater (n.):

A person that simply cannot be happy for another person’s success. Instead of giving acknowledgment in courtesy, a hater often pursues his/her point by exposing a flaw in the target subject. Hating, the result of being a hater, is not exactly jealousy. The hater doesn’t really want to be the person he or she hates, rather the hater wants to knock somelse [sic] down a notch.

Viral Instance

The GIF animation of a kid strutting and thinking the phrase was created by the artist Omar Noory. He drew the image in November 2008. It was originally uploaded to his portfolio page sometime in 2009, labeled “baller.gif” for something called “Top Secret Project.” The first public place he posted it was in an art thread on Yay Hooray.com

Spread

In 2009, image macros started to appear with subjects appearing during an action with the phrase on the photo. This was documented on Urlesque in May 2010.

Interest in the phrase picked up until June 2009 but has steadily increased since

Derivatives on 4chan

In May 2010, a variations thread appeared on 4chan, in which people posted photos with matching phrases based on the phrasal template “X-ers are gonna X.”

Etymology of “Hater” in Popular Culture

One of the earliest references to “haters” can be hard in ICE T’s 1999 single “Don’t Hate Tha Player”:

[Chorus: Ice-T]
Don’t hate the player, hate the game
Niggas, sharpen your aim
Every baller on the streets is searchin’ fortune and fame
Some come up, some get done up, except the twist
If you out for mega cheddar, you got to go high risk

The Playa Haters as seen on Dave Chappelle’s Show

Since then, the word “hater” and several variants have been adopted into common usage in American hip hop and comedy, as well as everyday vernacular for millions of people who consider themselves quite successful.