19 Dollar Fortnite Card

About

19 Dollar Fortnite Card refers to an erratically shot video of a man showing off a $19 Fortnite V-Bucks card for an alleged giveaway, telling everyone to "share, share, share" if they want it, and warning trolls not to get blocked.

Origin

Sometimes prior to January 14th, 2021, @imsofate, now @mrblocku^[1] uploaded a video to TikTok sitting in the passenger seat of his car, waving a Fortnite Vbucks card with $19 on it in front of the camera in order to advertise an alleged giveaway. In the video, he says, "Okay, $19 Fortnite card, who wants it? And yes, I'm giving it away. Remember; share, share share. And trolls, don't get blocked!" Throughout the video the camera angle is constantly moving and changing quickly, giving the video a laggy effect. The original video was deleted sometime after going up and reuploaded to YouTube^[2] by Crispy Cronchy on January 15th, 2021, garnering over 1.5 million views in two years (shown below).

Spread

The video began spreading across social media through reposts,^[8][9] inspiring viewers to make video edits out of it.

On January 15th, 2021, 8-BitAnt uploaded a video edit to YouTube^[3] recreating the video using Morshu from Zelda CD-i garnering over 6,900 views in a week (shown below, left).

On January 24th, 8-BitAnt uploaded another version of the meme featuring Morshu RTX ON to YouTube,^[4] garnering over 2,000 views in 3 days (shown below, right).

On January 26th, memes by cowbelly uploaded a video to YouTube^[5] and Instagram^[6] mixing Breaking Bad footage with the $19 Fortnite Card meme, garnering over 20,000 views on each (shown below, left). On January 27th, the channel released another meme featuring the video,^[7] garnering over 6,300 views in an hour (shown below, right).

On February 4th, MaxMoeFoe posted a tweet^[11] quoting the video, garnering over 19,000 likes and 1,800 retweets in 17 hours (shown below).

Aftermath

On March 21st, 2022, YouTuber Justicul published a video about MrBlockU and how the meme negatively impacted his life. In the video, he talks with MrBlockU, who explains how the meme was used to bully him. After the meme blew up, people would leave negative comments to try and get blocked by him. Rumors started to spread that MrBlockU's was going through a divorce and was kicked out of his home. Eventually, he actually did end up leaving his wife, suspecting she was cheating and ended up homeless. MrBlockU posted numerous videos about how he wasn't allowed to see his kids and showing a decline in health. At the end of the video, the YouTuber reveals that MrBlockU has a place to stay but is still looking for a job. The video (shown below, left) gained over 2.6 million views in nine months.

On October 23rd, the YouTuber posted a followup video and interview. In the video, MrBlockU talks about how he was suicidal but that Justicul's video inspired more donations to him on CashApp. He also reveals that MrBlockU managed to get a part-time job, earning $19 an hour.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References