About

What Are You Watching refers to a series of exploitables based on a comic by artist Joan Cornellá. In the comic, a mother catches her son watching something inappropriate. She scolds him before changing the DVD to something even more inappropriate. Variations of the comic that replace what the son and mother watch have appeared around the internet.

Origin

On January 27th, 2016, artist and cartoonist Joan Cornellá released a six-panel webcomic of a mother catching her son watching pornography. The comic (shown below) then features a mother forcing her son to watch a different DVD disc before the two enjoy a bestiality pornography film. While removed from several social channels, the comic still exists on Twitter, where it received more than 2,400 retweets and 2,500 likes.^[2] On Tumblr, it has more than 2,500 notes as of July 2017.^[3]

Spread

That day, Cornellá and others posted the comic to various social channels, such as Facebook, Instagram and 9gag] who later flagged the art as inappropriate and banned it from their sites, which he explained in a Tweet on June 1st.^[1] In the tweet, he said, "This comic strip was banned on FB and Instagram and some people reported it on Twitter. Good job, internet police!" The tweet (shown below) received more than 3,200 retweets and 4,200 likes.

Within a week of it being posted online, various accounts started replacing panels with other images. On February 9th, the "Geopolitical satire page" Bosniaball posted a variation, replacing the pornographic images with the flags of Turkey and the Austro-Hungarian empire.^[5] The post (shown below, left) received more than 160 reactions. The following week, on February 23rd, another variation appeared on Facebook, under the account AnimeCorporacion. The comic (shown below, right) has since been removed.

In December, a variation featuring the video games Paladins and Overwatch appeared on 9gag. The post (shown below) received more than 23,000 points and 100 comments.^[6]

On May 13th, 2017, Redditor SeEnglisSkila posted a version in the /r/Teenagers. The thread titled "The fastest way to learn Russian," which featured the mother turning off a "Learn Russian" DVD for the video game Counter Strike (shown below, left), received more than 7,300 points (94% upvoted) in two months.^[8]

The following month, on June 4th, Redditor DalekaniumEggClarke posted a version (shown below, right) in which the mother turns off the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why for Stranger Things. The post entitled "Mother Knows Best" in the /r/StrangerThings subreddit received more than 4,000 points (87% upvoted).^[9]

On July 26th, Redditor Lukewarmth posted about the meme on the /r/MemeEconomy in the thread "HAS LARGE POTENTIAL."

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not Available

External References