The Anti-memeing of "Are Ya Winning, Son?"

Occasionally memers on the internet will decide a long-dormant meme template is due for a resuscitation. It famously happens with Loss every few years, and popular recent examples include Is This A Pigeon?, which took over 2018's meme landscape well after the template debuted in 2011, and of course, the -Oomering of Wojak.

In 2020, the meme landscape prominently and inexplicably features a resurgence of Are Ya Winning, Son?, a webcomic from 2014 featuring a clueless dad walking in on his son playing a VR anime sex simulator.

The comic quickly became an exploitable template in the mid-2010s but laid mostly dormant until it suddenly became one of the hottest vehicles for anti-memes this year. The resurgence appears to have been influenced by a surge in video edits of the original comic; on March 30th, Instagram user blip.mp4 posted an edit whose YouTube repost gained over 230,000 views.

From there, the format began branching into wholesome and anti-meme territory. On May 2nd, a wholesome edit was posted to /r/Kappa and since then, memers have been exploiting the comedic potential of what is quickly becoming one of the internet's most iconic exploitables.