About

I Felt Worthless, I Felt Ugly, I Felt Gay refers to memes and jokes about a Streamy Award acceptance speech by YouTuber Yousef Erakat, better known as FouseyTube or Fousey, in October 2016. After the YouTuber won the "Audience Choice Entertainer of the Year" award in 2016, FouseyTube went on stage to deliver his acceptance speech and said, "But I want to say this. For a long time, I looked at myself in the mirror and I based myself on what I read in the comments. I felt worthless, I felt ugly, I felt gay I felt — that no like that's based on what they told me." The video of Fousey saying, "I felt worthless, I felt ugly, I felt gay," went viral in the following years and later made the rounds with a sound edit that showed people gasping at him saying "gay," subsequently coming to be used as a viral copypasta meme.

Origin

On October 4th, 2016, YouTuber Yousef Erakat, or FouseyTube, won the Audience Choice Entertainer of the Year at the 6th annual Streamy Awards. The YouTuber went up on stage to give his acceptance speech, saying:

"I want to say this. For a long time, I looked at myself in the mirror and I based myself on what I read in the comments. I felt worthless, I felt ugly, I felt gay I felt — that no like that's based on what they told me."

A clip of FouseyTube accepting his award was reposted to YouTube^[1] by user Panagiotis Kamarinopoulos on October 20th, 2018, gathering over 140,000 views in eight years.

Spread

On August 12th, 2023, TikToker^[2] @grannyjo24 posted a version of the clip with gasps from the audience edited in after Fousey says "I felt gay," gathering over 8 million plays and 1.3 million likes in two years.

Also on August 12th, 2023, Twitter / X^[5] user @wlyhassi posted the clip to Twitter, gathering over 48 million views and 139,000 likes in two years. On August 13th, X user @ryxn quoted the post, calling it the "male 'in the sense that,'" in reference to Kelly Osbourne's statements about Latino people on The View.

the male “in the sense that” 😭😭 https://t.co/m9Ke34yxl5

— ryxn (@itzryxxn) August 13, 2023

Ethan and Hila Klein reacted to the clip on the H3 Podcast on February 3rd, 2023, gathering over 32,000 views on YouTube^[3] in two years.

On September 21st, 2023, Twitch streamer xQc^[4] reacted to FouseyTube's acceptance speech, gathering over 23,000 views on a YouTube upload in two years.

Search Interest

External References