What's Up? Chicken Butt

About

What's Up? Chicken Butt, also known as Guess What? Chicken Butt, refers to a series of memes and jokes in which people respond to the question "what's up" or "guess what?" with "chicken butt." Originating from a pre-internet era social game, the format inspired a series of ironic and overtly dire memes about the consequences of answering the question (similar to Joe Mama).

Origin

According to TodayIFoundOut.com,^[1] while the exact origins are unknown, it is widely believed that the joke "What's up? Chicken Butt" comes from street merchants calling out the prices on chicken cuts, particularly the butt. However, as they note, the first recorded instance of the word "chicken butt" following either phrase was published in Charles G. Bell’s 1962 novel The Married Land. The book states:

…but what as a boy he had spoken with boys, white and colored, when they ran and fought together (“What, what, chicken butt, come around the house and lick it up.)

In 2019, the website published a video on the subject.

Spread

TodayIFoundOut.com concludes that joke, born out of merchant slang and Black-American culture, eventually made its way to the wider American lexicon in the 1970s and 80s. Following the novel's publication, the phrase did not reappear in the public lexicon until 1973 with the publication of the Black Language^[1] by Malachi Andrews and Paul T. Owen. They write:

Chicken Butt- When someone calls out, “What?”, because they didn’t hear, a reply might be the rhyme, “Chicken Butt.” It means forget it; I am not going to repeat it. Junior flip usage.

Mentions of the phrase also carried into the Internet era. On September 25th, 2003, for example, Urban Dictionary user Handsome Pete defined "chicken butt" as "A rhyme-arific and obnoxious way to respond to the obnoxious & ubiquitous question, "Guess What?" A much easier response than actually trying to guess the topic about to be brought up."

The 2000s-era internet supplied a number of "chicken butt"-related memes, from viral videos to image macros. On January 6th, 2008, YouTuber icephoenix23 posted the joke in a video that received more than 35,000 views in less than 13 years (shown below, left). Months later, on October 22nd, 2008, YouTuber jcj5Tahoe posted a song based on the joke that received more than 330,000 views in less than 13 years (shown below, right).

The meme also inspired Rage Comics that feature variations of the joke, like the one published by iFunny ^[2] user GenericFatKid_2016 posted a version on December 12th, 2012 (shown below).

Ironic Usage

In 2021, the phrase experienced a meme resurgence that is similar to that of 2019's Joe Mama resurgence. In this case, memers use the meme as an intentionally cringey joke for image macros in which people take the phrase overly seriously. On January 25th, 2021, for example, Instagram ^[3] user @lolhylian posted a two-panel image macro of Dwayne Johnson with the joke as the caption. The post received more than 26,000 likes in less than three days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References