About

Fan Meeting or Well This Is Awkward is an exploitable meme format based on a webcomic depicting a transgender catboy, communist, Nazi and MAGA supporter meeting at a Team Fortress 2 players meeting, implying that the game's fanbase attracts members of all of these cliques, despite the fact that they likely hold drastically different beliefs or ideologies. The original meme was posted to Reddit's /r/196 subreddit in February 2023 and gained viral spread over the following months, inspiring memes in which the banner is altered to represent a different fandom.

Origin

On February 11th, 2023, Redditor u/noobmaster_69lol posted an original meme to /r/196^[1] depicting four characters representing a transgender catboy, a communist, a Nazi and a MAGA supporter, standing under a banner reading "TF2 Players Meeting" with a speech bubble attributed to all of them reading, "Well. This is awkward." The post gained over 8,200 upvotes in a year.

Spread

The meme gained viral spread throughout 2023 and 2024, inspiring edits. On November 3rd, 2023, it was reposted to the subreddit /r/19684,^[2] garnering over 7,800 upvotes in nine months.

On November 4th, a slightly altered version of the meme was posted by X^[3] user @heavyfortres, garnering over 46,000 likes in the same span of time. Later that day, X^[4] user @TheF1amethr0wer posted an edit of the @heavyfortres version of the meme that includes niche references to the game's fandom, garnering over 5,000 likes in nine months.

On November 9th, 2023, a version of the meme referencing streamer Vaush's fanbase was posted to /r/EnoughCommieSpam,^[5] garnering around 100 upvotes in nine months. On November 24th, a version of the meme was posted to /r/WorldOfWarships^[6] referencing the fandom for World of Warships, garnering over 1,200 upvotes in nine months.

On November 29th, a version of the meme referencing Paradox Games' fandom was posted to /r/ParadoxExtra,^[7] garnering over 6,300 upvotes in nine months.

On January 18th, 2024, a Redditor posted a now-deleted version of the meme to /r/HistoryMemes^[8] referencing the Fallout: New Vegas fandom, garnering over 1,500 upvotes in seven months. On January 20th, a version of the meme referencing Minecraft was posted to /r/MinecraftMemes,^[9] garnering over 2,100 upvotes in the same span of time.

On April 7th, X^[10] user @fermerzpolissia posted a version of the meme that gained over 4,200 likes in four months. On April 12th, a version of the meme referencing the game Total War was posted to /r/totalwar,^[11] garnering over 1,300 upvotes in the same span of time.

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References