Looking to Protect Yourself, Or Deal Some Damage?
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About
Looking to Protect Yourself, Or Deal Some Damage? is a catchphrase used in a series of memes based on the quote from the merchant character Ulfberth War-Bear from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, who, when interacted with, sometimes asks the player, "Looking to protect yourself, or deal some damage?" The dialogue became the subject of memes as early as 2012, with a screenshot of War-Bear saying the line becoming increasingly popularized as an exploitable image macro format as early as 2018.
Origin
On November 11th, 2011, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released. In the video game, the merchant character Ulfberth War-Bear (who works the counter at Warmaiden's) will sometimes say to the character, "Looking to protect yourself, or deal some damage?" when interacting with him. The earliest known meme to reference this quote was archived on Know Your Meme[1] from an unspecified source on February 4th, 2012, by user iwhitt567 (shown below, left). The meme compares the phrasing to the Fry 'Not Sure If' meme format.
On November 11th, 2018, Redditor u/0u1tup posted a meme to the /r/pyrocynical[2] subreddit using an image of War-Bear saying the line in an image macro format, garnering around 30 upvotes in six years (shown below, right). This is the earliest known post to use this specific format in which the first half of the quote is used to refer to one image of Pyrocinical, while the second half is used to refer to another image of the YouTuber.
Spread
The format became increasingly popularized over the following years. On June 28th, 2019, Redditor u/valendrof posted a version of the meme referencing the game Uno to /r/memes,[3] garnering over 17,000 upvotes in five years (shown below, left). On February 16th, 2020, Redditor u/wiiisportsmiimes posted a version of the meme to /r/gaming[4] that gained over 20,000 upvotes in four years (shown below, right).
On March 31st, 2021, Redditor u/ScottyFoxes posted a new version of the meme to /r/memes[5] that garnered over 70,000 upvotes in three years (shown below, left). On December 11th, iFunny[6] user dankmemesdealer_2021 posted a meme referencing the quote that gained over 4,000 smiles in roughly the same span of time (shown below, right).
Various Examples
Search Interest
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External References
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