Phoebe Teaching Joey

About

Phoebe Teaching Joey refers to a scene from the Friends television series in which character Phoebe Buffay attempts to teach character Joey Tribbiani French by making him repeat words after her. In March 2020, the scene gained popularity in memes online, with Phoebe attempting to explain various concepts to Joey but ultimately failing, with the format being used in a similar vein to Patrick Star's Wallet meme format.

Origin

On February 19th, 2004, episode 13 ""The One Where Joey Speaks French" of season 10 of the Friends television series premiered in the United States.^[1] In once scene of the episode, character Phoebe Buffey attempts to help character Joey Tribbiani to learn French and asks him to repeat after her. Despite being able to properly repeat separate words comprising a sentence, Joey fails to repeat the sentence togehter (scene shown below).

- Great, ok faster! "je"
- Je.
- M'ap
- M'ap
- Pelle
- Pelle.
- Je m'appelle!
- Me poo poo!

On December 5th, 2011, an unregistered 9GAG^[2] user uploaded an eight-panel image based on the scene. The image received over 21,700 points in eight years (shown below).

Spread

In the following years, the image and its recreations was reposted online multiple times, including posts on Twitter,^[3] The Chive,^[4] 9GAG^[5] and other websites.

On March 18th, 2020, Facebook^[6] page Voyager Loin posted the first known meme based on the format, referencing the Stay Home campaign aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus. The image accumulated over 20,000 reactions and 19,000 shares in one week and received viral spread on Facebook in the following days. On March 22nd, 2020, Redditor bruggekiller posted a translated version of the meme to /r/memes subreddit, where it received over 20,000 reactions and 19,000 shares and 156,000 upvotes in four days (shown below, right).

The post prompted further spread of the format on Reddit and other websites in the following days.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References