About

Why He Ourple? refers to a misspelling of the word "purple" popularized in skamtebord-esque memes as a catchphrase about purple characters in late 2021 and early 2022. Due to its first appearance online, the phrase is also sometimes paired with the crying laughing emoji.

Origin

On September 11th, 2021, TikToker @user6785558212 posted an Ancient Egypt cat video featuring a cat that has inexplicably purple spots (shown below).

User @.aatidya.r then posted a comment on the video reading "And why he ourple?" along with the crying laughing emoji. This was spotted by Twitter^[1] user @wlfdog04, who tweeted screenshots of the video and comment on September 11th, 2021, gaining over 7,900 retweets and 97,000 likes in roughly four months (shown below).

Spread

The phrase started seeing a small amount of use in memes in the days following @wlfdog04's initial tweet. For example, on September 13th, 2021, iFunny^[2] user Trodden posted a White Egyptian meme with the phrase, gaining over 400 likes in roughly four months (shown below, left). However, the phrase wouldn't begin seeing significant spread until it was paired with jokes about Five Nights at Freddy's protagonist Michael Afton. On November 14th, 2021, Twitter user NxtDeterio^[3] posted the original "ourple" TikTok comment with a caption about Afton, gaining over 2,400 retweets and 12,000 likes in two months (shown below, right).

The @NxtDeterio tweet then inspired a visualization of the scene. On January 2nd, 2022, iFunny user HeyKaminari^[4] posted an image of Afton walking down the street with a neighbor asking "And why he ourple?" (shown below, left). On January 19th, user grunkle^[5] posted an exploitable variation of the image using Jotaro Kujo in place of Afton (shown below, right).

Related Memes

And Why He Eepy?

And Why He Eepy? refers to a series of memes using a caption with a purposeful misspelling of the word "sleepy" alongside images of a sleepy looking animal, such as a cat, or character. The catcphrase is a reference to the Why He Ourple? meme and was first posted to Twitter in late 2021, inspiring variants over the following year, typically image macros and redraws of the original.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References