About

Puta falta de sacanagem (“F***ing lack of immorality” in Portuguese) is an exploitable catchphrase uttered by Georgia Massa, a Brazilian teenager who became quite upset after her favorite band Restart's autograph session was canceled in Sao Paolo on April 28, 2010.

Restart Fandom in Brazil

Restart is an Emo/pop/hardcore band that went nationally popular in Brazil with an enormous teen/pre-teen fanbase since late 2009. Despite its success, the band is heavily criticized for its often predictable musical/lyrical qualities, much like American teen stars like Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers. The fans denominate themselves “Restart family” and imitate the signature dress codes of the band, including clothes in shockingly colored colors, emo-like hairstyle and big plastic glasses.

Origin

It all began on April 28, 2010, when the band's autograph session at a library in São Paulo had to be canceled after too many fans showed up at the event. Hundreds of teenagers were very upset and some of them were interviewed by the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper:

Georgia Massa, one of the fans, who appears at 1:27 in the video above, ranted:

Eu não tenho pulseirinha, sabe, eu acho uma puta falta de sacanagem, com o pessoal aqui que tá passando mal…

Translation: “I don’t have a wristband, you know, I think it’s a f***ing lack of immorality, to the people here who are fainting…”

A possible explanation for the poorly worded sentence is that she had falta de respeito (“lack of respect”) and sacanagem (colloquialism for “immorality”) mixed up and ended saying falta de sacanagem (“lack of immorality”), which is the opposite of what she intended to say.

Spread

Much like some spelling and grammar error-related memes like Son, I am disappoint, Then who was phone? and I accidentally 93MB of .rar files, this was quickly exploited as a catchphrase, which was the leading Brazilian trending topic on Twitter. It's normally used as a substitute for "sacanagem".

Aftermath

On May 16, the band invited some of the fans who appeared in the interview video, including Massa, to give an apology for the event getting canceled. Upon meeting Massa, the lead singer apparently cracked a witty one saying, "How awesome! I've met the greatest hit of right now!” The band also called her onto the stage, where the lead singer gave her a T-shirt with the catchphrase written on it.

Some days later, the band published a video asking for people to forget about the meme and leave Massa alone, but some say this video backfired as another example of the Streisand effect.

Parodies

Rio funk remix:

Commented edition:

“Restart family” about the Brazilian call-up for the World Cup:

Hitler rants about the cancellation of the Restart autograph session:

Despite being a video, some image parodies have also been made. Some take advantage of the fact that the word sacanagem is also slang for pornography. The images below are retrieved from Brazilian blog Ñ.intendo.