About

Butthurt is an online slang term used to describe a strongly negative or overemotional response. It is used to draw attention to a person who shows signs of being irritated due to a perceived insult, an unfavorable situation, or a lack of decent communication. On occasions, it can be also used to describe unreasonable users behaviors without an apparent explanation.

Origin

The term “butthurt” originates from spanking^[1], the act of striking the buttocks of another person, which is often seen as a method of punishing a child. Though some cultures view this as an acceptable form of discipline, it can be interpreted as abusive corporal punishment. Online, one of the earliest archived mentions of “butthurt” appeared in a 1998 comment^[8] posted on the website of Swiss surrealist painter H. R. Giger.^[9]

"Hollywood has tossed Giger for more talented artists, and even those artist who can emulate his style, without the tears and the hurt butts. If giger reads this I would be amazed, not only that he can comprehend a bunch of letters placed into groups and spaced randomly to create words which in turn create sentances, but that he can even UNDERSTAND the INTERNET! GIGER is LAME. all he can do is rely on his ALIEN paintings to make him famous! Well I used to be impressed until I read all this BUTTHURT he has been going through. Oh poor baby Giger."

The comment was left by a poster named Doug in responding to Giger’s grievance over not being credited as a designer for sequel titles in the Aliens franchise. In the original 1979 film Alien, Giger based the extraterrestrial monsters after one of his 1976 paintings, Necronom IV.

Spread

The term was first added to the Online Slang Dictionary^[10] as a hyphenated word on January 29th, 1999. The original definition stated it was anger caused by “a small slight or friendly insult.” The term was first added to Urban Dictionary^[12] in December 2001, and has since gained a total of 32 definitions^[2] with an additional 9 under “butt-hurt”^[13] and 19 under “butt hurt.”^[14] The term was named the Urban Word of the Day^[16] on May 2nd, 2006. It was added to Wiktionary^[11] in August 2007.

On YouTube, videos related to the term have been uploaded since as early as 2005, which mainly consists of butthurt behaviors found in online gaming or personal messages addressing those who feel that way. As of June 2012, there are more than 7100 video results^[17] for “butthurt." Additionally, a Facebook group titled U Butthurt Bro?^[15] was created in 2011, which has gained more than 5000 likes by June 2012.

Notable Examples

Derivatives

Buttfrustrated

Buttfrustrated^[18] is one of various related terms often applied to extreme butthurt and represented in image macros where the overlaid text exaggerates upon the person's irritation with a large variety of different phrases in Lolspeak. Many of these can be found on Tumblr tagged as either "#butthurt"^[3] or "#buttfrustrated."^[4]

Butthurt Face

Butthurt Face is an epic face smiley emoticon with the facial expression of trollbait. It is commonly used to ridicule or make fun of people being butthurt, but can also be used as to represent a pleased reaction towards rage or after successful trolling.

Butthurt Form

The Butthurt Form is a form listing certain points that may have caused butthurt, commonly used to mock people who are showing clear signs of butthurt. In the beginning of April 2012, the online group Anonymous used the butthurt form to fight a proposed Internet censorship bill in Arizona that would criminalize digital speech intended to "annoy, offend, terrify, threaten, intimidate, or harass" others. Twitter account @YourAnonNews^[20] encouraged residents to fax a copy of the form to the state's Governor Jan Brewer in protest of the law's wording. While the bill was signed into law on May 14th, 2012, it was amended to remove "annoy" and "offend" from the text. This story, and the Butthurt Form protest, was covered by RT.com^[5], the Phoenix New Times^[6] and Techspy.^[7]

Butthurt Dweller

Butthurt Dweller, also known as “Gordo Granudo”, is an image macro series that features a photo of a young adult male with a ponytail and glasses accompanied by overlaid text that involves a smug or judgmental statement. It was later adapted into a rage face, which is commonly combined with stereotypical nerd behavior.

Twitter Feed

Users on Twitter often use the hashtag #butthurt to describe either situations they they have witnessed or times when they have felt pained over small things.

Search Interest

External References