The C'mon Do Something meme (or do something meme for short) utilizes a White Ninja webcomic, in which a character pokes something with a stick, to comment on the speed or progress of different subjects. The meme dates back to, though it wasn't until 2015 that it started being employed as we know it today.
The simple webcomic quickly grew from a funny and well-appreciated image to a fan-favorite meme. It's easily adaptable to so many situations and thoughts. Everyone from sports fans to the politically passionate has used it to discuss the need for a reaction or response to something.
The original comic shows a slender character holding a stick and poking a dead fish. It was first shared by White Ninja Comics in 2003. In 2015, when White Ninja Comics joined Twitter (now X) to help archive the series, they used the image as their avatar.
Three months after that account launched, the image was applied as a meme on Reddit. An apparently disgruntled game player showed the image in a post, but instead of poking a dead fish, White Ninja was poking a distorted logo for The Simpsons: Tapped Out mobile game. In a subreddit devoted to that game, r/tappedout, Redditor KayakBassFisher posted it with the caption, "C'mon.......do something."
In the comments, people discussed the game's lapse of events. Quickly, others realized there were things they were hoping would also happen, and this meme was the perfect way of expressing it.
Redditors and Facebook users following the National Football League inserted logos of teams, including one of the Patriots that ended up on the NFL Memes Facebook page on Feb. 5, 2017. (That was the day of that year's Super Bowl, in which the Patriots fell behind 28-3 but then indeed "did something," making an epic comeback to win 34-28.)
From there, it took a bit of a dark turn, with a Redditor on r/dankmemes submitting a picture of White Ninja and the captions, "When you ran out of memes" and then, "C'mon, do a world war," with the stick poking flags representing the U.S. and various adversaries.
The presence of multiple online meme generators, and even a shirt begging Bitcoin to do something (which can be purchased on a site called CryptoGoodies) indicates that it's a versatile and well-trafficked meme. Whether it's applied to your favorite sports team, the Supreme Court, Congress, or the week not being Friday yet, the "do something" meme allows you to poke anything that's not moving enough for your liking.
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The post The ‘C’mon, Do Something’ meme, explained appeared first on The Daily Dot.
