About

What Is You Talmbout? also known as What I Do? is a catchphrase often associated with Hollywood and voice actor Awkwafina, although many internet users also associate the phrase with an Asian-American woman featured in a Funny Marco YouTube video. The phrase "What is you talmbout?" as uttered in an Atlanta accent is often used to joke about women of East-Asian origin speaking in an AAVE accent. Another popular quote sourced from the Funny Marco video is "What I do?" In August 2024, an image of makeup and nail artist PolishedByJade went viral in the What I Do 💜 meme trend, prompting Jade Nguyen to come forward as the person featured in both memes.

Origin

On May 19th, 2019, Funny Marco posted a comedy video to his YouTube^[1] page where he walked around a grocery store and filmed people's reactions after he told them, "You were hella wrong for what you did."

At the 3:44 minute timestamp, Funny Marco comes across an Asian-American woman, who responds to him by saying, "What did I do?" and "What is you talking about," in a thick southern or Atlanta accent, causing Marco to break character and tell her he's joking.

The woman's accent is often represented in text as her saying, "What I do?" and "What is you talmbout." The video gathered over 330,000 likes in five years (seen below).

Discussions about Hollywood actress Nora "Awkwafina" Lum's supposed "blaccent" also began to spread online in 2022, with many internet users criticizing Lum for supposedly hamming up a Black New York accent she does not naturally embody. Twitter^[3] user @MonicasFlight posted an example of Awkwafina's "blaccent," as well as a quote from an interview she gave with VICE^[4] in 2017.

“I refuse to do accents. I’m not OK with someone writing the Asian experience for an Asian character. I make it very clear, I don’t ever go out for auditions where I feel like I’m making a minstrel out of our people.” – Awkwafina pic.twitter.com/o9OtfBXd5n

— Tæ (@MonicasFlight) August 14, 2021

The backlash eventually led to Lum making a statement on Twitter in 2022, where she addressed the accusations of faking a Black accent before deleting her social media.^[2]

The earliest known joke linking Awkwafina with the catchphrase "What is you talmbout" is A February 19th, 2022 post by Twitter^[5] user @waitisovah, showing a fake Twitter screenshot of Awkwafina quoting the Asian-American woman in the aforementioned Funny Marco video. The image was reposted by @seohamz^[6] on February 1st, 2023, where it gathered over 30,000 likes in a year (seen below).

Spread

On June 21st, 2023, X^[7] user @thedarkprowler posted a tweet with Korean text that translates to "stop saying things that make your father cry," gathering over 69,000 likes in a year (seen below).

On July 9, 2024, X^[8] user @awshuqs quoted a tweet writing, "awkwafina therapist: what is you talmbout?" and gathering over 27,000 likes in a month (seen below).

Also in 2024, a blurry reaction image of an Asian American woman with the text "what i do" above her began to make the rounds online. The earliest known post of the image is a June 15th, 2021 post by Twitter^[9] user @yabbayussy (seen below, left), with X^[10] user @RlCKYRAGE posting an AI-enhanced version of the image on July 30th, 2024, gathering over 75,000 likes in two days (seen below, right).

Related Memes

What I Do 💜

What I Do 💜 refers to a reaction and image macro meme featuring nail and makeup artist Jade Nguyen A.K.A. PolishedByJade. The image shows a stylish Asian woman standing with her legs crossed and her hand on her hip, often shown in the format of a blurry Twitter post that reads, "What I Do." The phrase "What I Do" is in reference to a 2019-era Funny Marco YouTube prank video where he pranks an Asian woman in a grocery store, and breaks character after hearing her say "What is you talmbout" and "What I do" in an AAVE accent. The phrase "What I Do" alongside the images of the Jade Nguyen woman went viral on TikTok in late August and early September 2024.

Search Interest

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External References