JeriTroll

About

JeriTroll is an image macro series featuring an image of professional wrestler Chris Jericho^[1], usually with overlaid text that depicts acts of trolling or deception. "JeriTroll" is also the name given to the act of Chris Jericho trolling wrestling fans.

Origin

Throughout November and December 2011, WWE aired a series of cryptic vignettes that foretold a mystery wrestler's return to the company on January 2nd, 2012^[2]. Though the videos were aimed to be mysterious (containing dark images and sounds, and eerie children prophesying the end of the world), it became extremely obvious that the videos foretold the long-awaited return of Chris Jericho. As a result, wrestling fans all over the world became hyped for Jericho's return and eager to find out the story behind the mysterious vignettes.

On the January 2nd, 2012 edition of WWE Raw it was confirmed that Chris Jericho was indeed the returning wrestler. That night WWE dedicated over 12 minutes of it's air time solely to Chris Jericho. In those twelve minutes, nothing happened. Jericho spent the entire segment physically hyping up the entire crowd, only to walk away without saying a single word on the microphone.

This segment quickly caused a backlash from wrestling fans all over the world who complained about being denied what they wanted and expected: to hear Chris Jericho talk. Because of this reaction, many fans of Jericho who appreciated the segment began applauding his ability to cause such a huge reaction and started referring to both Jericho and the event as a "JeriTroll".

Jericho has continued to consistently troll every week since his return and the further information on this can be seen further down in this entry.

Spread

The phrase #JERITROLLED began trending Worldwide on Twitter^[3], along with images of Jericho photo-shopped to include trollface. A tumblr account called Y2JeriTroll^[4] began posting JeriTroll-related images regularly and the first template and example of the JeriTroll advice exploitable was soon posted on MemeGenerator by user NotMartinCameron^[5].

Many notable derivatives have been made since, and more are continuously being made as Chris Jericho continues to troll his fans.

Notable Examples

Precursor

Though the term "JeriTroll" was first coined in relation to his 2012 return to wrestling, Chris Jericho has been trolling since the early days of his professional wrestling career.

One of the most notable examples of this was during the March 30, 1998 episode of WCW Monday Nitro when Jericho claimed to know exactly 1,004 wrestling holds. To prove this, he began listing every single one. The majority of these "holds" were completely fictional and every other hold was just an armbar, but Jericho managed to read out 805 of the "holds" to the live audience before he was finally interrupted by Prince Iaukea.

Continued JeriTrolling

Jericho would return to Raw on January 9th and again not say a single word during his segment. To troll the fans even more, Jericho pretended to be overwhelmed with emotion and started to feign crying before "emotionally" leaving the arena.

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On the January 16 episode of Raw, Jericho made his long awaited in-ring return in a six-man tag match. For the majority of the contest, Jericho stayed out of the ring and had no physical involvement until he was finally tagged in by his partner CM Punk. Jericho physically hyped the crowd upon entering the ring but after 20 seconds of running around, he tagged his other partner Daniel Bryan in to the match and walked out of the arena.

"Chris Jericho Spotted"

In the lead up to Jericho's expected return, several stories began to surface of him being 'spotted' at WWE shows and towns where WWE events were being held. With the majority of these being false or merely coincidence, a meme similar to Sarkozy Was There was soon born out of photo-shopping Chris Jericho in to ridiculous settings or historical scenes. Chris Jericho even joined in on the meme himself through his Twitter account, mocking people for thinking he was going to return. This act of Jericho's was itself a JeriTroll.

Examples

External References

^[1] Wikipedia – Chris Jericho
fn2. Youtube – ItBegins2012
fn3. Image – #JERITROLLED Trending Worldwide
fn4. Tumblr – Y2Jeritroll
fn5. MemeGenerator – Generator