About

Ariana Grande As Every Race refers to the viral debate and meme trend surrounding pop music singer Ariana Grande who, over the years, has been accused of "race-fishing," which means she allegedly alters her appearance through fake-tanning and make-up to look like a specific ethnicity. While these accusations are a mix of sarcasm and genuine criticism, the discussion and debate of it online have garnered meme attention regardless, predominantly on Twitter starting in late 2018.

Origin

Discussion online related to Ariana Grande's race-fishing started most notably in late November 2018 when the singer debuted the music video for her song "thank u, next" on YouTube ^[1] (shown below). In the music video, her skin tone is noticeably dark.

Tweets^[2] surfaced on November 8th, 2018, after screenshots from the upcoming music video were posted online. A set of two photos of Grande began circulating on Twitter that showed a transformation in her skin tone. The image (shown below) has one photo from when Grande was an actress on Victorious and the other one is of her at the 2016 American Music Awards. This specific comparison photo is photoshopped (her skin in the right side picture was darkened by someone to make the comparison more extreme).

The first meme to use this image was tweeted by the now-deleted Twitter user @AlexTheAsshole on December 2nd, 2018. The tweet (shown below) received lots of replies^[3] and was reposted to sites like iFunny ^[4] the next day.

Spread

"Blackfishing" became a trending discussion on Twitter^[5] the week after Grande's music video release. Articles were published going into 2019 about Grande and blackfishing, such as an article by The Tempest,^[6] published in March 2019 by author Sara Hussain.

Ariana Grande Asian-Fishing

Discussion related to Ariana Grande as every race picked up again in early December 2021, when on December 1st, Twitter^[7] account @PopCrave tweeted two photos of Grande that many on the platform saw as problematic. The tweet (shown below) received roughly 18,800 likes over five days.

Twitter^[8] users like @JustinWhang started reacting to the photos on December 2nd. Whang's tweet (shown below) received roughly 2,800 likes over four days.

Other Twitter users began posting memes using the idea of Thanos collecting "all the races." Twitter^[9] user @chogeXL tweeted a meme in this vein (shown below) that received roughly 2,300 likes over three days.

There were also Twitter users who defended Grande, like @rubyxconfetti^[10] whose tweet (shown below) was posted on December 4th, 2021, and received roughly 9,400 likes in two days.

Image macro memes incorporating multiple images of Grande appeared on platforms like Facebook going into December 2021. For instance, Facebook^[11] page Vellum and Vinyl but less liberal posted a meme on December 1st, 2021, that labeled photos of Ariana Grande as "The Axis Powers." The meme (shown below) received roughly 560 reactions over five days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References