About

Speen (a play on the word "spin") is a catchphrase made popular through Let's Play videos and streams by YouTuber Vinny of Vinesauce. Whenever a character in a videogame spins, Vinny says, "speen" in an accent for comedic effect.

Origin

On May 11th, 2018, the first part of a Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga playthrough was uploaded to the Vinesauce: The Full Sauce^[1] YouTube page (shown below). At timestamp 1:05:13 the Mario Brothers learn the spin move. As the tutorial Toad characters demonstrate the move, Vinny shouts, "speen." This is the first time Vinny uses the catchphrase.

The way in which Vinny says "spin" as "speen" comes from Vinesauce's Garry's Mod roleplay videos^[2], in which Vinny often uses a bad Russian accent that turns short "I" sounds into a "double-E" sound.

On September 30th, Vinny uploaded a video titled, "Quick GameCube Corruptions" to the Vinesauce: The Full Sauce channel (shown below). At around 47:55 in the video, Vinny says "My name is Genome soldier and I like to speen," in an exaggerated Russian accent. In this video, the word "speen" is edited to sound distorted and wobbly. This sound clip is often used in memes based on the catchphrase.

Spread

Fans responded positively to the catchphrase, and Vinny continued to repeat it anytime a videogame character in a let's play or stream spun. Vinesauce fans started making memes with clips of Vinny using the catchphrase.

On January 1st, 2019, Reddit user TramuatizeMeCaptain posted a video of a Lizalfos from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild glitching on /r/vinesauce, causing it to spin.^[3] The post received over 400 upvotes in 20 months. On July 3rd, 2019, YouTuber Edward Lu^[4] uploaded a video titled "speen.mp4" to his channel, which uses a sound clip of Vinny shouting the catchphrase over footage of a spinning can (shown below). The video garnered over 874 thousand views in 14 months.

On August 17th, 2019, YouTuber J Cruise 24^[5] uploaded a video titled, "[Vinesauce] Vinny – SPEEN! Compilation" to their channel (shown below, left). The video shows clips of Vinny using the catchphrase throughout various streams and garnered over 502 thousand views in 13 months. J Cruise 24 uploaded a second compilation on October 23rd, garnering over 50 thousand views in 11 months (shown below, right).