About

Who Are You People, I Thought I Hired Goons refers to an exploitable meme format that imagines a person confusing two groups of people while hiring due to their names being homonymic, such as hiring goths of the goth subculture instead of goths of the Germanic tribes. Created by artist Fallenchungus in May 2024, the format achieved virality in the summer of that year.

Origin

On May 16th, 2024, webcomic artist Fallenchungus posted a single-panel comic in which an evil leader wishing to hire goons accidentally hires goons (masturbation addicts) due to the words being homonyms. The post (shown below) received over 9,600 reposts and 113,000 likes on X^[1] / Twitter in four months.

Spread

Later on May 16th, 2024, X^[2] user @ItsThatDude17 posted the earliest edit of the comic, a reversed version in which a gooner accidentally hired henchmen. The edit (shown below) garnered over 12,000 reposts and 136,000 likes in four months.

On May 29th, 2024, iFunny^[3] user DRAGONORRHEA posted a two-panel version about scalping that exploited both the original and the edit. The meme (shown below) gained over 8,700 likes on the platform in three months.

The two-panel format saw active use on Reddit and X in the following months. For example, on June 11th, Redditor Jaromir_Amadeus_VIII posted a history meme, which garnered over 8,400 upvotes in the /r/HistoryMemes^[4] subreddit in three months (shown below).

The format maintained popularity online through the summer of 2024.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References