About

Guy Who Made the Joke vs. Guy Who Said It Louder refers to a trope popularized by 2013 sketch "High on Potenuse" by the comedy duo Key & Peele. In March 2019, an influx of jokes based on the trope took place on Reddit.

Origin

On November 7th, 2013, Comedy Central uploaded sketch " High on Potenuse" by comedy duo Key & Peele to their YouTube channel.^[1] In the sketch, a student shares a joke with his classmate, who then repeats it loudly, making the entire class laugh.

- I wish I were high on potenuse.
- *laughs* I WISH I WAS HIGH ON POTENUSE!

Spread

The sketch gained significant internet attention, gaining over 27 million views in five years, while the word "potenuse" has since become a popular reference to the trope. On April 21st, 2016, Redditor^[2] threecoolcats uploaded a still image from the sketch to /r/me_irl subreddit where it gained over 21,300 upvotes in six months. On May 14th, 2016, Redditor^[3] DrDraculaConstantine posted a screenshot of a tweet supposedly made by Twitter user @CHlLDHOODRUINER^[4], titling their post "I wish i was high on potenuse" and gaining over 7,300 upvotes in six months.

On July 30th, 2018, actor Cole M. Sprouse made a referenced a trope to describe meme culture.^[5] The tweet gained over 61,000 retweets and 396,000 likes in seven months.

On December 22nd, 2018, Redditor^[6] therealjustinjr posted a meme utilizing the trope to /r/BikiniBottomTwitter subreddit, where it gained over 41,300 upvotes (shown below, left). On March 11th, 2019, Redditor^[7] mfatah007 made a post containing captioned photographs of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs to /r/dankmemes subreddit, where it received over 79,600 upvotes in three days (shown below, right).

Following mfatah007's post, multiple submissions utilizing the same format were posted by Reddit users to /r/dankmemes,^[8] /r/HistoryMemes,^[9] /r/Animemes^[10] and other subreddits.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References