Ggggg

About

Ggggg is a cryptic in-joke on the social news site Reddit that was initially conceived as a covert method of text-based communications involving the sequential use of the English alphabet letter "G" in its both uppercase and lowercase forms. Despite its pragmatic roots in the Morse code language, the practice eventually grew out of its intended purpose and devolved into a self-referential joke as many others began using random sequential strings of the letter in their posts to incite confusion.

Origin

On January 24th, 2010, the /r/ggggg^[1] subreddit was launched, gaining over 16,700 subscribers over the next six years. According to Redditor thebigone200,^[7] the subreddit was initially created for people to post messages in Morse code, with the uppercase "G" indicating a "da" signal and the lowercase "g" indicated a "dit" signal. Eventually, the subreddit abandoned the Morse code theme and became centered around humorous posts featuring creative uses of the letter.

Spread

On November 15th, 2011, Redditor MultiUseAccount created the /r/gggg^[9] subreddit, which mimics /r/ggggg. On January 7th, 2012, Redditor Teddy-Westside posted an image macro featuring a dog sitting in front of a laptop with the captop "It's just the letter G / I don't get it" to /r/AdviceAnimals^[4] (shown below, left). On March 10th, Redditor PotatoMusicBinge submitted /r/ggggg to /r/subredditoftheday.^[8] On July 6th, Redditor Teppums submitted a reaction GIF featuring actor Jim Carrey titled "My face when looking at /r/ggggg" to the /r/reactiongifs^[3] subreddit (shown below, right). In the next three years, the posts received more than 800 votes (92% upvoted) and 1,500 votes (93% upvoted) respectively.

On July 14th, 2013, Redditor endisnear12 posted a list of 200 "interesting subreddits," which included /r/ggggg under the category "miscellaneous." On August 14th, 2014, Redditor War_Messiah submitted a post asking about the /r/ggggg subreddit to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[6] On November 17th, 2015, Redditor Deliciousbob submitted an edited GIF titled "Just another post from /r/ggggg" featuring an edited clip of a scene from Wheel of Fortune with a puzzle spelling the word "Gggggg ggggggg" (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post gained over 5,200 votes (90% upvoted) and 930 comments on the /r/funny^[5] subreddit. On November 18th, the subreddit was made private for unknown reasons.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References