Chef Skinner Reading a Letter
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About
Chef Skinner Reading a Letter refers to a series of exploitable image macros based on a clip of Ratatouille character Chef Skinner reading a letter containing character Chef Gusteau's will, with Skinner becoming progressively more agitated as he reads it. In early March 2021, the clip gained popularity in GIF Captions on iFunny, later spreading to Twitter.
Origin
On June 29th, 2007, the animated Pixar film Ratatouille premiered.[1] In one scene, the character Chef Skinner discovers an envelope containing the character Chef Gusteau's will, which, if made public knowledge, could lead to Skinner losing his job. Skinner gets increasingly more agitated as he reads through the document, becoming aware of its implications (clip shown below).
On March 4th, 2021, iFunny[2] user ABELINCOLN1865 created a GIF caption meme based on the scene, with the post gaining over 1,500 smiles in one week (shown below).
On the same day, iFunny[3][4] user Clem posted several GIF captions based on the GIFs, while on March 5th, iFunny[5] user Epic_Dabbing_Steve posted a GIF caption that received over 830 smiles in one week (shown below, left). The trend did not gain traction until March 5th when iFunny[6] user Papist posted a meme based on a reversed version of the GIF captioned "Me reading instructions on how to read slower" (shown below, right). The post received over 32,900 smiles in one week and was featured on the app.
Spread
Following Papist's post, the Chef Skinner GIF caption trend achieved viral spread on iFunny. For example, on March 5th, iFunny[7] user Radicunt posted a version of the meme that received over 2,700 smiles in one week (shown below, left). Later on the same day, user kyubi[8] posted a version that referenced the 2 Girls 1 Cup shock video (shown below). The post received over 26,800 smiles in one week and was featured on the app.
In addition to GIF captions, several viral videos based on the clip were posted in early March 2021. For example, on March 6th, 2021, iFunny[9] user Radicunt posted a Zelda CD-i meme that gained over 3,300 smiles in six days (shown below, left). On March 8th, user Kurjao posted[10] a Team Fortress 2 meme that gained over 1,100 smiles (shown below, right).
On March 7th, Twitter[11] user @Pholtergeist reposted Papist's meme to Twitter, with the tweet gaining over 5,100 retweets and 28,600 likes and helping the format spread on the platform.
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