About

"2005!! The Year Of The Gamer!!" is an exploitable meme inspired by a Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomic, best known for Loss. The panel shows the webcomic character Ethan celebrating with his shirt wrapped around his head, shouting, "Wooo! 2005!! The Year of the Gamer!!" In the late 2010s and early 2020s, the panel inspired a number of redraws and edits, oftentimes with the year updated to reflect a closer date.

Origin

The panel comes from the Ctrl+Alt+Del comic titled "Simple Rules", which was posted on December 31st, 2004.^[1] In the comic (shown below), Ethan gets drunk after a game of shot glass checkers and shouts "Wooo! 2005!! The Year of the Gamer!! Woo!".

On December 31st, 2017, the earliest known repost of the cropped panel (shown below) was posted to Tumblr by crustofjustice,^[2] where it received over 26,000 likes and over 26,000 reposts in seven years.

Spread

Several internet users shared altered versions of the webcomic in the late 2010s and early 2020s, as seen in a January 1st, 2018 post on /r/lossedits^[3] by /u/kippller. The post gathered over 300 points in seven years.

On December 31st, 2022, Tumblr^[4] user @zombvibes posted a redraw of the meme, showing Berdly from Deltarune celebrating the "Year of the Gamer," and gathering over 1,000 notes in two years.

On March 3rd, 2023, Tumblr^[5] user @kindgreenape posted an edit where the Ctrl+Alt+Del characters represent Disco Elysium characters instead. The post gathered over 6,000 likes and 4,000 reposts in two years.

The redraw trend began to gain notable traction in 2025, as seen in a January 1st, 2025 post by X^[6] user @cowboy_robooty that gathered over 1,000 likes in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References