About

Are Ya Winning, Son? is an exploitable image series based on an MS Paint webcomic in which a father walks in on his son playing a hentai virtual reality game and asks "are ya winning, son?"

Origin

While the exact origin of the comic is unknown, it may have originated from 4chan due to the use of the name "Anon-kun," a reference to the site's anonymous users. On January 11th, 2014, the comic was submitted to an Oculus Rift thread on the RPG Codex Forums^[6] (shown below).

Spread

On March 21st, 2014, FunnyJunk user Aejax^[1] submitted the comic in the comic section of a post with the caption "This is the future you chose." On January 29th, 2015, MemeCenter^[5] user bakoahmed submitted an animated GIF of various people viewing virtual reality pornography for the first time placed above the "Are Ya Winning Son?" comic (shown below). Within two years, the post gained over 1,600 likes and 80 comments.

On August 15th, Redditor SheZowRaisedByWolves posted the comic to the /r/justneckbeardthings^[7] subreddit, where it garnered upwards of 950 votes (96% upvoted) and 60 comments prior to being archived. On September 19th, Tumblr user eva-420 reblogged a variation in which the son appears to have merged with his machine (below).^[2] While the original post was subsequently removed, reblogs indicate it obtained more than 2,600 notes over the next six months.

On September 22nd, 2015, FunnyJunk^[3] user magmamax posted a series of comics depicting a story in which the father discovers that his son committed suicide (shown below).

In the comment section of the post, user hxhmaniac posted a variation^[4] featuring Jotaro Kujo from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure with the caption "now I feel bad" (shown below).

2020 Resurgence

In May of 2020, the template began seeing a resurgence, with a particular spike in wholesome and anti-meme variations. On May 2nd, Reddit user i9980XE^[8] posted a wholesome variation that gained over 1,400 points (shown below, left). On May 17th, Twitter user @helen^[9] posted an edit which gained over 7,000 retweets and 68,000 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

External References