About

Mano, Tu é Gay? refers to a popular phrase and a series of image macros about Buzz Lightyear with Portuguese captions of him asking someone "Are you gay, bro?" The images derive from a series of scenes in the Toy Story movie franchise and became popularized as a meme in Brazil in 2019, after a parody video of the movie was posted on YouTube. The meme also has variations of the phrase like Ele É? (Is he [gay]?) and Confirmado Ele É (confirmed, he is [gay]).

Origin

On July 28th, 2019, YouTube^[1] Channel @rokyori8554 posted a parody video of the Toy Story movie featuring Buzz Lightyear telling a story to Woody of a time he hooked up with a male friend, but with "no homo" intentions. The video garnered 8.9 million plays and 428,000 likes in four years (seen below).

The audio used in the video came from the Brazilian comedian Leandro Leitte. On July 9th, 2019, he posted a video on Facebook^[2] recreating the viral audio. The post received 9,100 views and 309 likes in four years (seen below).

Spread

The parody video's success led to the creation of the Buzz Lightyear image macro with the Portuguese caption "Mano, tu é gay?" on September 21st, 2019. Twitter^[3] user @brusnos used an image of a confused Buzz to tweet about girls who wish for a romantic and sensitive boy on social media but when they see one they assume he is gay. The post garnered 10,900 likes and 2,701 retweets in four years (seen below).

The Toy Story character became an exploitable image macro for memes related to gay behavior noticed by other men. For example, on September 17th, 2019, Pinterest^[4] user Gatodogpaqui posted an image (seen below, left) of a confused Buzz Lightyear with the caption "When you're making out with your friend 'no homo' and he tries to kiss you." Another instance of the meme was posted on the Facebook^[5] page worldofmemesbr12 on January 30th, 2020, showing an image of a Checkers game and the caption "When your friend says that if you don't eat him now, he'll eat you next." Below the checkers is the image macro of Buzz with the text "Tu é gay mano?" (are you gay bro?). The post (seen below, right) received 50 likes and 15 shares in three years.

Ele É?

The variation of the meme "Ele é?" (Is he [gay]?) first appeared on YouTube on May 12th, 2020, with a scene from Toy Story 2 in which Buzz Lightyear is talking to another Buzz toy saying "Então ele é?" The video (seen below), uploaded by YouTube^[6] user Rayrlande, garnered 499,813 views and 13,000 likes in three years, and the clip is often used as a reaction phrase to indicate that someone is gay.

The scene inspired GIFs and image macros on social media, like the examples below:

Confirmado, Ele É

On June 19th, 2020, a new version of the "Ele é?" meme was spotted on Facebook^[7] in a post by nerdonautas in which the page shared the scene from the Shrek 2 movie in which Pinocchio lies about not wearing pants. User Igor Silva responded to the post with an image of Buzz Lightyear as a judge with the caption "confirmed, he is [gay]" (seen below).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References