About

Tetten is the Flemish word for "breasts" or "tits" and is often used online as a comment or post text alongside images of women with large breasts or women wearing revealing clothing. An image of a king known as Tettenman from the Belgian comic Ridder Bauknecht yelling "tetten!" is often used as a reaction image on similar posts. The original webcomic was published around 2002 by Belgian artist Jeroom and the image started to see use in memes in the late 2010s throughout the early 2020s.

Origin

On November 7th, 2011, a cartoon by Belgian cartoonist Jeroom from his Ridder Bauknecht series was posted to the site Humo.be.^[1] In the first panel, a man asks a knight, "Who is this old man?" The knight responds, "Silence, that is King Arthur and he is about to speak with the people." He then says "tetten" over and over. The men are won over in the end, saying, "That's a man I want to serve. His will is my law" (shown below). The comic seems to have been originally published in Humo magazine sometime prior to 2002. The comic was mentioned in an interview with Patrick Riguelle by the Knack Focus^[3] on September 17th, 2002, where he said that Jeroom "reintroduced the word 'tetten', which had fallen out of use" through his Ridder Bauknect comic. A scan of the comic was uploaded to Telenet^[2] as early as December 22nd, 2003.

Spread

Images of the king saying "tetten" became popularized as reaction images in the late 2010s leading into the early 2020s. For example, on September 27th, 2018, an image from the comic was posted to /r/cirkeltrek,^[4] gaining over 217 upvotes in four years (shown below, left). On November 7th, 2019, Tenor^[5] user RicoTway posted a GIF using the image under women with large breasts (shown below, right).

On November 2nd, 2020, Imgur^[6] user dw4h44s0 posted a cropping from the comic showing the king with his hands raised yelling "Tetten!" On August 29th, 2021, a 9Gag^[7] user uploaded a version of the comic translated into English, gaining over 90 upvotes in nine months (shown below).

The cropped panel saw increased use as a reaction image in the 2020s, particularly on 9GAG. For example, on March 10th, 2022, a 9GAG^[8] user posted the meme under an image of a woman in a revealing bathing suit, gaining over 1,500 upvotes in two months. On April 28th, it was used in the same way on 9GAG^[9] under a video of a girl whose breasts are bouncing, gaining over 2,000 upvotes in a month.

Reaction Image

Search Interest

External References