Joe Exotic's "I Refuse To Wear A Suit" Speech

About

Joe Exotic's "I Refuse To Wear A Suit" Speech refers to a copypasta and quotable pop culture reference taken from a Joe Exotic political campaign speech uploaded to YouTube in 2015. Following the release of the Netflix docuseries Tiger King: Murder Mayhem and Madness in March 2020, the video clip and speech itself circulated Reddit, Twitter and TikTok in the form of a copypasta, reaction clip, and reference to Joe Exotic.

Origin

On November 24th, 2015, YouTuber Cabote Films uploaded "Joe Exotic for President! 2016" (shown below).The video gained over 1.2 million views and 12,000 likes in five years. In the video Joe Exotic states:
"First thing is I am not cutting my hair. I'm not changing the way I dress. I refuse to wear a suit. I am gay. I've had two boyfriends most of my life. I currently got legally married, thank god. It's finally legal in America. I've had some kinky sex. I have tried drugs through the younger years of my life. I am broke as shit. I have a judgment against me from some bitch down there in Florida."

Spread

In October 2016, the clip appeared in a segment on Last Week Tonight, which was uploaded to YouTube on October 16th, 2016 (shown below).

On March 20th, 2020, Tiger King debuted on Netflix and included the campaign clip. On March 30th, TikToker @dakotasweat used the sound clip in to describe herself after coming home from college (shown below, let). The video garnered over 158,000 likes in a week. TikToker @hannahkuhl27 also used the sound clip in a video with cross-stitch fan art of the quote (shown below, right). The video received over 382400 likes in a week.

On March 31st, Reddior vivky_vicious used the line to caption a Joe Exotic makeover post in r/Makeupaddiction^[1] which accumulated over 80 likes (86% upvoted) in six days (shown below, left). On April 1st, Twitter user @itneghz^[2] captioned a Animal Crossing Joe Exotic inspired character with "I am gay I’ve had two boyfriends most of my life I’ve had some kinky sex I’ve tried drugs I’m broke as shit I have a judgement against me from some bitch down there in Florida I" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References