About

"Excuse Me, WTF R U Doing?" is a series of reaction images based on pictures of animals or characters looking at the viewer in puzzlement. In online discussions, these images are typically used to convey disapproval in response to baffling comments made by another poster, similar to other reaction memes like WTF Is This Shit? and What Is This I Don't Even.

Origin

According to Lurkmoar, the phrase initially gained traction through its widespread usage in LOLcat image macros and reaction images on 4chan's /b/, though no archived threads from the imageboard exist to support this claim. The earliest known image macro bearing the caption was anonymously uploaded to the Internet humor site Error: Access Denied^[1] on November 14th, 2006 (shown below).

Spread

Between 2007 and 2009, the original image macro of the cat and derivative instances featuring other baffled-looking animals were used in dozens of discussion threads in online forums and comments section of news sites, including OhNoTheyDidnt^[4], CrunchyRoll Forum^[7], Democratic Underground^[10], Bodybuilding Forum^[11] and IGN Forum^[15], though by 2010, the usage of the phrase had begun to wane as LOLcat images in general gradually fell out of favor among Internet users. On June 7th, 2013, a single topic blog titled "excuse me james wtf r u doin"^[18] was launched on Tumblr, which catalogues pictures of Scottish actor James MaCavoy with the caption "wtf is james doin." On May 7th, 2013, a video clip of a group of dogs looking confused with the title "excuse me wtf r u doin" was uploaded to Imgur.^[17] The image gained over 7,454 points, 1.3 million views and 162 comments.

Various Examples

External References