About

Cristi, Bă Cristi" (English: “Cristi, Hey Cristi!”) is a catchphrase taken from a viral video of a Romanian man struggling to shoo away a small dog tugging on his boot. In late January 2016, the soundbite became a popular subject of parodies after a remix version featuring footage of the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis went viral on the Romanian web, along with the quote itself, which is oft-repeated in the comments section and chat rooms on sites like YouTube and Twitch.

Origin

The video was first posted on February 2nd, 2015 by YouTube user ElTricon3. In the video, a smoking man is being attacked by a small dog, and he is calling for the dog's owner to free him. The video has gained 1.8 million views as of February 4th, 2016; in addition, several mirrors of the video have also gained millions of views.^[2]

The dialogue, in English (translated by Dan Tanasă)^[1]:

Man with dog: Please take him away!

Guy filming: Kick him!

Other man: Jump on the fence!

Man with dog: Please call Cristi! (Cristi is a name of a person, man, probably the owner of the dog)

Man filming calls for Cristi several times.

Man filming: Watch it! It will break your boot!

Man with dog calls for Cristi again, and asks the others to go get Cristi. He is also asking the other men to put the dog in chains.

Eventually Cristi comes and the dog releases the man.

Spread

On January 23rd, 2016, YouTuber Dead Guy OV uploaded a remix of the original video that combines press conference footage of Romanian President Klaus Iohannis with the soundbite of the man yelling “Cristi, Bă Cristi!" The video gained over 357,000 views on YouTube as of February 4th. With the soaring popularity of the Klaus Iohannis remix of the video, more parodies proliferated; there are over 26,000 results for “Cristi Ba Cristi” videos on YouTube.^[3] On January 26th,, the Romanian news site HotNews^[6] reported that users on Facebook had created an event where people were invited to the subway in Bucharest to create a flash mob of people shaking their legs and screaming “Ba Cristi!”; over 9,900 people said they were interested in the event, and 3,200 people marked themselves as attending.^[4] Meanwhile, English-language commenters on YouTube started asking things like “Is this where the Twitch meme comes from?” on the original video and its mirrors, indicating that the term was in high usage in Twitch game stream chats, which are currently unsearchable.^[5]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References