About

What's All This Racket? (a.k.a "Fat Son" and "Mirada Fija" on Spain and Latin America) is a series of multi-pane comics depicting various dialogues between an Otaku-type character and his scornful father. The comic typically begins with the father entering his son's room to see what he's up to and ends with the father reacting disappointedly to his son's response. Though speculative, "What's All This Racket, Son" is most likely a spin-off series inspired by the Son, I am disappoint comics.

Origin

The 4-pane comic series was conceived on 4chan's /a/ board around April 14th, 2009. One of the earliest archived thread of one of the comics in the series can be found on the Green-Oval archive^[1]. It spread throughout various forums and imageboards circa early 2009, with the earliest known non-4chan thread on Grand Holy Empire of Batta forum^[2] dating back to April 18th, 2009. The original comic illustrates a rather entertaining conversation about Japanese animes between the father and the son:

Spread

The comics have since been reposted on 4chan's topical imageboards like /a/ (anime board)^[2] and /v/ (video game board)^[3], videogame-related forums^[4], anime communities^[5] and other Otaku strongholds on the web in the style of an edited exploitable. The blank template has spawned dozens of derivative artworks exploring a wide range of subject matters through father-and-son dialogue. The phrase "what's all this racket, son?" has been also used in forum discussions as a standalone expression to indicate one's annoyance against another member in the thread.

The final panel of the father's staring face is frequently used in rage comics, and is referred to as "stare" in the f7u12 subreddit^[7] and as "Mirada Fija" in the spaniard infamous site Cuánto Cabrón ^[8]

Usage

The face has been also widely used as a reaction face in comment threads, oftentimes to express concerns or displeasure towards another user's behaviors or remarks. For example in Reddit's AdviceAnimals section, typing the code [stare] into the text field generates the dad's reaction face. Its usage can be comparable to Stare Dad or Son, I am disappoint reaction faces.

Notable Examples

Blank Exploitable

External References