What Does 'I'm Not Gonna Sugarcoat It' Mean? The Tekken Fighter Meme Explained

A frenzy of action on screen, pixels flying, colors bouncing. Sounds that could be from an animal, a machine or a human being. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: this is increasingly what the internet is like for us, an overwhelming tsunami of content, noise and color. But let's break it down and explain one meme in particular: I'm Not Gonna Sugarcoat It, a gaming meme that developed into something much stranger.

Where Did The 'I'm Not Gonna Sugarcoat It' Meme Come From?

The meme consists of several pieces, with two of them reaching back to the 1990s. The first version of the game Tekken was released in 1994, with protagonist/villain (depending on which version of the game you play) Kazuya Mishima playing a prominent role. Before his Rage Drive attack combo, Mishima repeats the catchphrase I'm Not Gonna Sugarcoat It.

In mid-2022, the catchphrase and game footage were combined with a distorted Vine Boom sound effect and a highly-edited version of the "dam" sound effect from the 1995 movie Friday (the same film that the Bye Felicia catchphrase comes from). What emerges is an overstimulating and overall gratuitous blizzard of chaotic sound darting and bouncing around. The "dam" clip is distorted enough to sound like a meowing cat, while the Vine Booms coalesce into a grim cacophony.

How Do People Use 'I'm Not Gonna Sugarcoat It'?

The audio from the two memes and the image macro showing the "I'm Not Gonna Sugarcoat It" catchphrase gets spliced into gameplay footage of characters from other games. This way, Mishima and his trademark sounds burst in absurdly during moments of gameplay

What Does The 'I'm Not Gonna Sugarcoat It' Meme Mean?

It is a moldy meme, meaning that it follows a different set of aesthetic standards than most memes. In a moldy meme, like in a deep fried meme, beauty is found in the accumulated effects of saving and sharing a piece of media repeatedly. The marks of degradation on a digital file, such as blurriness, color-draining and distortion, become its central aesthetic traits. 'I'm Not Gonna Sugarcoat It' does this, but with sound.

These memes tend to be deeply online and if they mean anything, that meaning likely lies in how maximally overstimulating and ironic they come to be with repeated use.

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For the full history of I'm Not Gonna Sugarcoat It, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.