How Do I Shot Web?

About

“How Do I Shot Web?” is a popular catchphrase paired with an image of Spider-man, that is typically used in online conversations to poke fun at n00bish behavior.

Origin

The original comic pane was first published in a 1984 issue of The Amazing Spider-man, appearing in a promotional page asking for the readers’ feedback on advertisements:

There are conflicting reports regarding the birth of “how do I shot web?”, but numerous reference materials point to Something Awful (SA) forums’s “goons-only” gaming server as the earliest known site of origin. According to firsthand accounts, it was originally quoted during a round of Natural Selection^[1] (2002), wherein the alien enemies’ primary choice of weapon was shooting spider webs. Out of sheer frustration, a newbie player repeatedly asked “how do i shot web?” in imperfect English, which presumably meant “How Do I Shoot Web.”

The earliest Google sighting^[2] of the phrase was reported as early as in February 2003.

Spread

This grammatically strange phrase initially spread as an in-joke among SomethingAwful users who frequented the FYAD (“Fuck You and Die”)^[3] section, but reached across the boards on Something Awful, eventually reaching 4chan’s /b/ (random) board^[4], where an image macro of Spider-Man saying the phrase spawned hundreds of other pictures containing the phrase.

The phrase has been also altered to reference other memes, such as “how do i shoop da woop” and “bitches don’t know how to shot web”.

Usage & Variations

Today, there are countless variations of the “How do I shot web?” phrase, using a past tense verb + noun combination in replacement of “shot web?” In addition, one may respond to any of these “How Do I” queries with an ASCII-based catchphrase, I Dunno LOL ¯\(°_o)/¯.

Search Interest

External References