The Fat Controller Laughed

About

The Fat Controller Laughed, "You Are Wrong" is a reaction image macro based on a captioned screenshot of Sir Topham Hatt from the animated children's television series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. The caption, which reads, "The Fat Controller laughed, 'You are wrong'" is misquoting the scene. In the episode, the narrator says, "Sir Topham Hatt laughed, 'Well, the engines are wrong, and you shouldn't listen to them.'"

Origin

On October 6th, 1998, the episode "Thomas and the Rumours" of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends aired in the United Kingdom (clip below).^[1] In the episode, Thomas worries that a helicopter named Harold will replace the trains. After telling his concerns to Sir Topham Hatt, the narrator (voiced by Alec Baldwin) says, "Sir Topham Hatt laughed, 'Well, the engines are wrong, and you shouldn't listen to them.'"

On November 27th, 2014, Tumblr ^[2] user fxckbro posted the earliest available image of the meme. They captioned the post, "when someone tells u that u shouldnt eat so much pasta." The post received more than 800,000 notes in less than seven years (shown below).

Spread

The following year, the image continued to circulate online as a reaction to recommendations about food intake. For example, in May 2015, a since-deleted tweet by Twitter^[3][4] user @_ConorLynn used the image as a response the caption "When the food packaging says 'Serves 3-4 people'" (shown below, left).

Over the next five years, people continued to use the image to express disagreement with another's comment or suggestion. On December 28th, 2019, MemeDroid^[5] user Camazotz posted a variation that reacts to one's parents saying, "If you keep eating like that, you will get sick and die." The post received more than 850 upvotes (86% upvoted) in less than one year (shown below, center). On July 7th, 2020, Redditor DiegoTrueck used the image in the /r/memes^[6] subreddit to respond to the Twitter comment, "Twitter is 1000% the hardest platform to gain followers on." The post received more than 32,000 points (95% upvoted) and 370 comments in less than one year (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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External References