About

Hood Irony is a genre of ironic memes in which meme creators make mock "gangsta" imagery and jokes using slang and memes related to Black American culture. The genre of memes ultimately satirizes the culture, turning the signifiers into content that's avant-garde, nonsensical and oftentimes meaningless, reminiscent of stigmas surrounding Zoomer humor. Hood Irony became prevalent on Instagram, iFunny and Reddit's /r/OkBuddyRetard subreddit in the late 2010s, spiking in 2018 and 2019. In 2022, content labeled "hood irony" surfaced on TikTok as well, starting Hood Lobotomy memes that involved Greenscreen Silhouettes, YouTube "subscribe" button notifications and other ironically low-quality and moldy visuals. Many memes and micro-trends fall under the Hood Irony umbrella, such as When You Outside And You Smell That Zaza, Ambatukam and Quandale Dingle, among others.

Online History

Hood irony stems from Black comedic signifiers started by online communities like Black Twitter and early Vine. For instance, Black male Viners such as King Bach were satirized via ironic meme trends like Only a Spoonful, which spiked in exploitable usage on Reddit, iFunny and Instagram in early 2020.

On Vine, hood irony began to manifest from certain prolific creators such as Osama Bin Turnt (OBT), who's currently known as Debo or @killmefam on Twitter. Starting in June 2014, OBT posted multiple Vines that satirized the "hood comedy" Vines from Black male creators (compilation shown below). Other Viners within the same circle were Nick Colletti, Casey Frey and Dan Curtin, however, OBT's Vines always leaned towards hood irony more than others.

After Vine went defunct in late 2016, OBT and many other ironic Viners moved to Twitter, forming a core group of Twitter users such as @killmefam, @mineifiwildout, @adda_boi and @BillRatchet whose jokes and cadences leaned towards hood irony.

Hood Irony on Instagram

Starting in 2018, pages specifically identified as "hood irony pages" began surfacing on Instagram whose usernames used many of the same words, some of which were slurs and other explicit language related to sex and race. Many of the usernames also harked on MLG gaming montage parodies and then-recent meme trends like Ugandan Knuckles.

Many of the original 2018 hood irony Instagram pages have since been suspended or deleted. Additionally, several of them were not added to the Internet Archive. However, many of their usernames are still accessible via reposts of their content from their still active mutuals.

For instance, some of the earliest hood irony Instagram pages active in 2018 and early 2019 include:

• @waterniggababy12^[1]
• @blackops2fan2007^[2]
• @dankmemes.69.mp4^[3]
• @anglo_siegepiller_69^[3]
• @bruhnion^[4]
• @69ugandanknuckles420
• @ctrl_club_^[5]
• @fortnitegamer2010^[6]
• @kirby.exe
• @sandniggababy14^[7]
• @cum.coochie^[8]
• @super_black_guy_^[9]
• @niggafishfeels2^[10]
• @slapnut.ig^[11]
• @bigniggabruh360noscopenigga^[12]
• @longtesticlez^[13]
• @gang.manny
• @shidnugget
• @wocktopia
• @sittierbu^[14]
• @zztails^[15]
• @benisblaster

As stated, many of these pages are defunct in the year 2023 with some exceptions being @69ugandanknuckles420, @kirby.exe, @gang.manny, @shidnugget, @wocktopia, @benisblaster and @longtesticlez (but on a new account called @longtesticlezs).

Many of the aforementioned Instagram pages played with ironic meme signifiers started by Redditors in the /r/OkBuddyRetard subreddit in 2017 and 2018. Some within the Instagram irony community credit @zztails for bringing the genre to the platform.^[15]

A great deal of the Instagram "hood irony" pages notably surfaced in order to satirize "hood comedy" pages like Daquan and WorldStarHipHop.

"Hood irony" was also first added to Urban Dictionary ^[16] on February 21st, 2019, by the user chill.bruh.funny.hood.vines, earning over 120 likes in four years (shown below).

2022 Resurgence

"Hood irony" pages on Instagram came back en masse predominantly in 2022 via pages such as:

• @chxallah
• @hood_certified_wdl
• @lxidbixl
• @_sosa_chiefkeef_glo
• @schassisirony
• @60percenthomojrr

Many of the pages also satirized Arabic and Indian meme content. Additionally, 2022 hood irony pages on Instagram helped popularized the black silhouette walking and other silhouette meme videos in late 2022.

On TikTok

Inspired by the 2022 resurgence of hood irony content on Instagram, content specifically labeled as "hood irony" via captions and hashtags spread to TikTok in 2022. For instance, content labeled as "hood irony" was posted in February and March 2022 (examples shown below), largely due to the notoriety of Quandale Dingle, Ambatukam and Thug Shaker, among other trends.

Greenscreen Silhouette Hood Irony

Greenscreen Silhouette Hood Irony, also known as Silhouette Walking Hood Irony or Silhouette Irony, refers to a trend in which video creators add free-to-download greenscreen silhouette animations of walking, running and jogging people, among other actions, into their shitpost meme compilations akin to Hood Irony. The trend started on Instagram in 2020, mostly due to the Instagram page @chxallah. In 2022, the trend became more prevalent on Instagram, later spreading to TikTok in early 2023. The silhouette greenscreen videos primarily come from YouTuber Savvas Karampalasis and stock image website Shutterstock.

Hood Lobotomy

Hood Lobotomy refers to a subset of Hood Irony memes common on TikTok that combine greenscreen silhouettes and the Me Everytime After The Lobotomy video concept into one video genre that reads like noncoherent and avant-garde Schizoposting. Although the Hood Lobotomy aesthetic was founded on Instagram starting in 2020, the phrase "Hood Lobotomy" wasn't coined until early 2023 on TikTok within Hood Irony comment sections on the app, later inspiring the #hoodlobotomy hashtag.

Hood Irony Dramatizations / You Should X / X:

You Should X / X:, also known as X Is So Good / X:, You Gotta X / X:, You Should Play X It's So Good / The Gameplay:, or You Should Watch X It's So Good / X:, refers to a phrasal template that makes fun of video games, movies and TV shows using Hood Irony visuals to show an ironically low-quality Hood Irony Dramatization of the game's gameplay or the show's plotline/episodes. The trend started with a meme about the anime One Piece in which a Pirate Irony video was labeled as episode 30 of One Piece. The trend spread across TikTok in early 2023, eventually spreading to other platforms. Eventually, continents and countries were also made fun of, resulting in so-called "Continent Irony."

Related Memes

Smoke Weed Everyday

Possibly the first ironic hood meme before "hood irony" was later coined is Smoke Weed Everyday which is a lyrical part from the 2000 rap single "The Next Episode" by hip hop artists and producers Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. The phrase has gained usage in numerous image macros, music remixes and YouTube Poop Music Videos.

Thug Life

Thug Life Remixes are a series of YouTube videos that typically begin with home movies of preadolescents using overly confrontational or expletive language, followed by a freeze-frame at a close-up image of the subject and an instrumental fade out to Dr. Dre's 1999 gangsta rap song "The Next Episode."

This Is a Certified Hood Classic

This Is a Certified Hood Classic is a catchphrase associated with Trap Music due a soundbite saying the phrase that is ubiquitous in the music of rap group Trap-A-Holics and others. Its ubiquity led to its use in many popular parody videos.

Gangster SpongeBob

Gangster SpongeBob or Gangsta SpongeBob refers to a series of fan art that depict cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants as a gangster. Originally a series of independently created fan art, in 2019 and 2020, the artworks gained meme recognition, being used as source material for ironic memes.

Weed Card

Weed Card, also known as Drop the Drug, refers to a viral sketch by Vine user MarlonWebbSkits in which a man sitting in the car tells the police officer that he should not be arrested for drug possession due to him having a "weed card," after which both start dancing to "Hood Figga" by Gorilla Zoe. The Vine gained popularity in edits on iFunny in September 2018, and reached mainstream popularity on Instagram in August 2019.

Comically Large Spoon

Comically Large Spoon, also known as Only a Spoonful, refers to a viral Vine by Vine user King Bach in which he pulls out a comically large spoon upon being told that he can only have a spoonful of ice cream. Starting in late May 2020, the Vine regained through GIF captions and humorous edits.

Hood Alt TikTok

Hood Alt TikTok is a community on TikTok collected largely under the hashtag #hoodalt. The community is a popular branch of Alt TikTok. Hood Alt TikTok videos typically feature a vintage camera filter and coordinated dances set to a variety of alternative hip-hop/pop songs. The most commonly used song is, "I'd Rather Sleep" by Kero Kero Bonito,^[1] more specifically a clipping from the song featuring the lyrics, "now I know what's real what's fake."

Ironic DaBaby Memes

Ironic DaBaby Memes refers to a series of ironic memes featuring rapper DaBaby. The format utilizes images and the name of the rapper in humorous ways and includes several notable sub-memes such as DaBaby Convertible, DaBaby's Finger Guns and his "Let's Go" lyric.

Chinese Restaurants in the Hood Be Like

Chinese Restaurants in the Hood Be Like refers to a series of exploitable video re-edits of a TikTok originally posted in April 2021. The original video received lots of backlash on TikTok due to its alleged racist undertones. In August 2021, the original TikTok began being re-edited on iFunny and Instagram, mostly playing into the absurdity of the original video's premise and delivery, becoming an exploitable format for memes.

Quandale Dingle

Quandale Dingle is the name of a Pennsauken high school football player featured in a series of goofy ahh shitpost memes based on a viral screenshot of a PC login screen for a man with the name. The earliest known upload of the screenshot was posted to TikTok in September 2021 and went viral through reposts, inspiring further memes referencing the name and how ridiculous it is. In late 2021 throughout early 2022 people began using distorted images of people, mostly images of rapper NBA Youngboy, to represent Quandale Dingle in ironic memes. The name also inspired a trend where TikTokers create parody RapTV posts about Quandale.

Ambatukam / Dreamybull

Ambatukam, also known as Ambatukam Omaygot, refers to multiple explicit pornography videos of adult film star Dreamybull who became notable for flamboyantly screaming, "I'm about to cum! Oh my God!" at the end of all his videos. The words "Ambatukam Omaygot" are pronounced the same way as the exclamation, being a version of it that reads like a first and last name of African origin. The videos, originally posted to Twitter, were re-edited and exploited on TikTok in early 2022 where users recaptioned cropped versions of them, using Dreamy's O-face and posting him ironically. Ambatukam later surfaced on YouTube and 4chan.

When You Outside And Smell That Zaza

When You Outside And Smell That Zaza is a catchphrase used in ironic "hood" memes that pokes fun at marijuana use and the slang term "zaza," referring to dispensary-grade weed. The phrase is typically used over image macros of characters showcasing what smelling zaza outside is like, often leading with curiosity and mischief. It was first used earnestly in an Instagram meme posted in early 2021.

Thug Shaker / Thug Hunter

Thug Shaker is a slang phrase describing videos of Black men, who presumably live a "thug" lifestyle, performing the "rump shaker" dance move while naked, which consists of shaking their buttocks. The clips are frequently used in bait-and-switch media. The name "thug shaker" and a related copypasta both hail from a 2020 gay pornography video.

Doesn't Need Autotune

Doesn't Need Autotune refers to a snowclone trend that exploits the aesthetics of RapTV infographics regarding hip-hop artists and rappers, like DaBaby, not needing auto-tune to sound good. Meme creators replaced the audio of the original, 2019 Instagram post to memetic songs such as Minecraft YouTuber intros or the American Dad! theme song and its remixes. The format took off en masse in early 2021, however, it gained traction on both TikTok and YouTube in 2022 in videos that referenced other rappers like Yeat and BabyTron, among others.

The Erotic Barber / Brandon Curington

The Erotic Barber, real name Brandon Curington, is a gay and Black Atlanta-based barber known for giving nude haircuts and doubling as an OnlyFans model. A specific, explicit video of him wearing a blue baseball cap is used in recontextualized porn memes similarily to both Thug Shaker and Ambatukam. On TikTok and elsewhere in 2022 and 2023, the Erotic Barber was matched up against Dreamybull in powerscaling edits. Additionally, a CapCut template featuring the Minions at a movie theater was used to showcase Erotic Barber videos. He's known for having Instagram, YouTube and TikTok presences, however, he gained his largest following on his since-deleted Twitter account from 2019 to 2021.

Search Interest

External References