Shittymorph

About

Shittymorph is a Reddit user and online personality primarily responsible for the proliferation of the The Undertaker Threw Mankind Off Hell in the Cell meme. He has accumulated over 1.3 million karma points on Reddit mostly with the use of the copypasta. His meme efforts have been acknowledged by the WWE, Jeopardy!, Family Guy, and Reddit. In 2019, the Reddit administration team announced they would be implementing an experimental "tipping" system in the /r/shittymorph subreddit. Users who visited the subreddit would have the option of tipping user Shittymorph money.

History

User Shittymorph joined Reddit on January 3rd, 2016.^[1] He began gaining fame on the site with consistent use of the "Hell In a Cell" copypasta. On January 19th, 2017, he posted the copypasta in a thread relating to Salt Bae. ^[2] On February 6th, 2017, Redditor ScienceLivesInsideMe replied to a photograph of a dog on the /r/aww subreddit with Scooby Doo-themed variation of the copypasta. In response, Redditor Shittymorph replied explaining that the message was something he had been posting for weeks:

It is something I have been posting for a few weeks – I usually adjust the statement to whatever the post is related to. I have been getting a laugh out of doing it and other people have seemed to enjoy it too – Anyway – since this is my post and I have been going around making variations of this comment people are now showing up here on my post with their own variations of the comment. I hope that clarifies things…. but please do not let this extensive clarification distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table."^[3]

Over the course of the following years, the copypasta became one of the best known on Reddit. On November 29th, 2017, CNET^[4] posted an article about Shittymorph, real name Chris, and the copypasta. In the article Chris confirms that the copypasta was inspired by a Facebook post he found that referenced the match out of context. During a Reddit AMA Shittymorph explained that he found humor in an out of context reference to the match on "a post about dogs" that has since been deleted. The Facebook version of the meme existed as a "Don't let that distract you from" style statement. Over time, Shittymorph developed the meme into what has been described as a "text based Rickroll" – where the user is tricked into reading the copypasta after making their way through a well written paragraph on the topic at hand.

Reputation

Shittymorph's effort in developing the meme has been referenced in multiple places outside of Reddit. WWE sent him a package commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Hell In a Cell match^[6] (shown below, left). The meme was referenced by the Jeopardy! Twitter account (shown below, right). It appeared to be referenced in the Family Guy mobile game,^[7] and has been referenced in Hearthstone as well.^[10]

A definition for Shittymorph has been submitted to Urban Dictionary^[8] and the user's devoted subreddit, /r/shittymorph,^[9] has over 9,000 subscribers.

Tipping Experiment

On February 26th, 2019, a Reddit site administrator, /u/internetmallcop, announced that Reddit was experimenting with a tipping system in which visitors of /r/shittymorph could tip /u/shittymorph.^[11] According to shittymorph in the ensuing thread, the feature was an experiment being rolled out by Reddit, and /r/shittymorph was chosen as the beta-testing location. The event made Shittymorph the first Redditor who could be paid directly by users of the site.^[12]

Search Interest

External References