#IArmTheFool

About

#iarmthefool refers to an April Fools' Day 2021 event among webcomic artists in which the artists posted a comic featuring a gag centered around large, unnaturally long arms. The name is a play on "I am the fool," which was a 2016 April Fools' event in which dozens of webcomic artists posted a comic with the same basic premise ending with the punchline "Maybe I am the fool."

Origin

On April 1st, 2021, dozens of webcomic artists began posting comics that centered on the same gag of a character in the comic having unnaturally long arms, sharing the posts with the hashtag #IArmTheFool. The name is a play on a 2016 April Fools prank organized by Alex Norris in which webcomic artists all posted a very similar comic with the punchline "Maybe I am the fool."^[1] In 2019, webcomic artists pulled a similar prank in which they drew their characters with hyperrealistic eyes with the hashtag #EyeAmTheFool.

While it's unclear who organized the 2021 #IArmTheFool trend, the earliest post featuring the hashtag posted to Instagram was by user mushroommovie, gaining over 8,700 views (shown below).

Spread

Throughout the day, webcomic artists posted variations on #IArmTheFool. There are 155 posts with the hashtag on Instagram^[2] and many more on Twitter. Popular examples include a comic by the_reddot^[3] that gained over 30,000 likes on Instagram (shown below, left) and a comic by @lastplacecomics^[4] that gained over 600 retweets and 4,000 likes on Twitter (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References