About

Y Tho, an abbreviation of the question "why though?", is a popular slang phrase usually asked in a trolling manner in response to a senseless action or statement. It later grew associated with a painting of a round, fat pope with a small face.

Origin

The earliest definition of "Y Tho was posted to Urban Dictionary by licia^[1] on February 19th, 2007 (shown below).

The phrase later became associated with a painting of Pope Leon X painted by Fernando Botero^[2] (shown below, left). On December 12th, 2014, the "image macro" version of the painting with the "Y Tho" text was uploaded to Imgur (shown below, right), where it gained over 38,000 views.^[3] A week later, the image was posted in a thread on /r/funny by user firstwarrior.^[4]

Spread

After the image macro's first appearance online, it began to spread as a popular reaction image to senseless scenarios. On May 12th, 2015, Imgur user collius^[5] uploaded a hi-resolution version of the image macro, gaining 1.2 million views. On March 6th, 2016, Reddit user kvdence^[6] uploaded the pic captioned "When yr mom says you can't have a 3rd plate of food" to /r/funny, gaining 450 points (shown below).

Meanwhile, the phrase itself continued to be used in various reaction images with the same context, as well as online in response to various statements and news.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References