About

Don't Mess With Fans or Don't Fuck With Fans refers to a series of ironic memes which warn people not to mess with fans of certain fandoms, paired with a humorous reason why they shouldn't do it, most notably with the punchline "we'll suck your dick."

Origin

Prior to April 13th, 2018, an unknown user posted an image of Skyrim protagonist Dragonborn captioned "Don't fuck with a Skyrim player, we will suck your dick." On April 13th, 2018, Facebook^[1] group Gaming Time made the earliest repost of the image, with the post gaining over 360 reactions and 600 shares in two years. On April 14th, 2018, Tumblr^[2] user fed-durst reposted the image, gaining over 10,800 likes and reblogs in the same period, with more reposts following in the next months.

Spread

Prior to March 2019, the format did not see a significant spread online with limited examples available. For example, on December 31st, 2018, Redditor^[3] whatever-you-say-ugh posted a Devil May Cry version of the meme.

On March 6th, 2019, Instagram^[4] user katsuya_the_fuuk posted an ironic meme depicting Revelations: Persona and Persona 2: Innocent Sin protagonists Boy with Earring and Tatsuya Suou captioned "Don't fuck with us Persona 1 and 2 fans, we'll suck your dick." The post received over 380 likes in one year and received viral spread online in the following weeks with reposts on Instagram^[5] and Twitter.^[6]

Prior to May 18th, 2019, an unknown user posted the earliest known derivative meme, replacing "we'll suck your dick" with "we don't exist" (shown below). On May 18th, iFunny^[7] user Gundam made the earliest found repost of the image, gaining over 60 smiles in one year. A May 19th iFunny^[8] repost received over 1,300 smiles in one year.

The format did not see further spread until on August 6th, 2019, iFunny^[9] user AIDSforBreakfast posted a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure version of the meme that received over 3,400 smiles in one year (shown below, left). On August 13th, another JoJo's Bizarre Adventure meme made by an unknown user went viral^[10][11] (shown below, center). Starting in September 2019, format received spread on Twitter and iFunny with multiple viral examples^[11][12] (shown below, right), with the format maintaining significant popularity into 2020.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References