Leave the Multimillion Dollar Company Alone / Leave the Lady Be
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About
Leave the Multimillion Dollar Company Alone or Leave the Lady Be, also known as Leave the Multibillion Dollar Company Alone, is an exploitable meme template and reaction image depicting an overweight neckbeard in a fighting stance dual-wielding knives, captioned, "Leave the multibillion dollar company alone," as if he is willing to defend the company with his life. The meme first appeared online around March 2015 with the caption "leave the lady be" and the new caption was applied to it around January 2021, gaining viral spread over the following years. It is often used mockingly as a response to controversies involving the fanbase of a wealthy corporation's product defending it against wrongdoing.
Origin
On March 9th, 2015, Tumblr[1] user kingslacky posted an original meme template showing two stick figures on either side of a gorge, one shooting the other, writing, "explain how you protect yourself. You can change the enemy, the victim, the weapon, literally anything. Use photoshop or whatever you want to butcher the living shit out of this template." The users offer several examples of solutions under the template, including an image of a large neckbeard character with a knife saying "leave the lady be" in the gorge, garnering over 45,000 notes in nine years (shown below, left). This is the earliest known appearance of the image online, although it may not be the true original.
The cropped image of the neckbeard gained viral spread online over the following years, including reposts to Imgur,[2] Know Your Meme[3] and Reddit[4] (example shown below, right).
On January 16th, 2021, iFunny[5] user Stumpage posted an edit of the character from the meme, captioned, "Leave alone the multimillion dollar company," garnering around 30 smiles in three years (shown below). This is the earliest known upload of the meme with the relevant caption.
Spread
The meme, in particular versions using the "multimillion" and "multibillion" captions, became increasingly popularized throughout the 2020s. On October 10th, 2022, u/Dim-n-Bright posted a meme to /r/PoliticalCompassMemes[6] using the image, garnering over 2,300 upvotes in just over a year (shown below, left).
On July 4th, 2023, u/DarthKhonshu posted a version of the meme to /r/DestinyMemes,[7] writing, "Bungie defenders be like," responding to the controversy surrounding the management of the game Destiny 2, garnering over 2,700 upvotes in six months (shown below, right).
On September 18th, u/bagietMajster98 posted a version of the meme originally posted by Instagram[8] user economicleft to /r/Unity3D[9] (referencing the company's controversy at the time) writing, "How I see people defending Unity price changes," garnering over 5,500 upvotes in four months (shown below).
On December 15th, 2023, u/StarkillerSneed posted a version of the meme to /r/MinecraftMemes,[10] writing, "r/MinecraftMemes whenever players criticize anything in the game," garnering over 10,000 upvotes in a month (shown below, left).
On January 21st, 2024, X[11] user @TheIronMadden posted a photoshop of the neckbeard in Nintendo merch, writing, "Nintendo fanboys right now regarding Palworld," referencing allegations that the video game Palworld ripped off Pokemon's designs, garnering over 11,000 likes in a week (shown below, right).
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] Tumblr – kingslacky
[3] KYM – discord666
[4] Reddit – justneckbeardthings
[6] Reddit – politicalcompassmemes
[7] Reddit – destinymemes
[8] Instagram – economicleft
[10] Reddit – MinecraftMemes
[11] X – TheIronMadden
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