About

"Filthy Casual" is a term used on message boards and in comments to negatively describe a gamer who only plays casual games^[1], or a game in any genre that requires a low level of commitment and often has simple gameplay.

Origin

The term originated on 4chan's /v/ (video games) board by hardcore gamers who view people who play casual games in a negative light. The first archived use of the term^[2] was posted on August 30th, 2008 in a parody thread about how an average discussion plays out on the board.

Spread

By April 2009, the term had spread to other boards on 4chan, including /m/ (Mecha)^[3], where a poster was called a filthy casual for admitting he or she enjoyed the anime Toradora!.^[4] Throughout 2010, the phrase appeared on a handful of other boards including /a/^[5] (anime & manga) and /tg/^[6] (traditional gaming). Also that year, "filthy casuals" was used in commentary about people who play Facebook-based games on the Escapist forums^[7] and on a Destructoid community member's blog.^[8] In December 2011, the first tagged image macro depicting a stereotypically nerdy looking male with a caption referencing filthy casuals was posted to Tumblr^[9]

On April 10th, 2012, Josué Pereira of the webcomic Nerf Now!^[11] posted a strip comparing the gaming habits of filthy casuals vs. self-proclaimed elite gamers (shown below). That same day, it was reposted to the /r/Gaming^[10] subreddit, where it accrued 505 upvotes, 363 points overall and 72 comments before being archived. In late 2012, references to these types of gamers were made on the /r/Circlejerk^[12] subreddit and World of Tanks gaming forum.^[13] That November, the first Facebook fan page^[14] dedicated to the phrase launched.

On January 21st, 2013, a /r/FilthyCasuals^[15] subreddit was created, but has only had one submission as of May 2013. A week later, a second Facebook^[16] fan page was established. In early 2013, discussions and image macros about these types of gamers have appeared on Gamespot^[17], We Know Memes^[18], Tumblr^[19] and FunnyJunk.^[20]

Search Interest

External References