30-Year-Old Virgin Wizard

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About

The 30-Year-Old Virgin Wizard is an Internet legend stating that a person can be endowed with magical powers and become a "wizard" if they reach the age of 30 without engaging in sexual intercourse.

Origin

The myth is believed to have began at the now defunct Japanese free enquete/voting generating service known as the Automatic Enquete Generator or 自動アンケート作成. The phrase "30-Year-Old Male Virgin becomes Wizard" became popular among users of the service around as early as the year 2001. After the service shut down on May, 2002, the phrase was picked up by other Japanese online communities such as Futaba Channel.
The earliest known recorded mention of the legend on the Western net was in an Urban Dictionary^[5] entry submitted on December 21st, 2008. In the definition, user momo1212 defined the term "wizard" as "a person who never lost his virginity over 25 years."

Spread

In early November 2011, the 5th episode of the anime series Haganai titled "This Time the SAGA is a Serious Battle" aired in Japan. The episode is notable for referencing the myth of a virgin wizard when the protagonist Kodaka Hasegawa chose the wizard class while playing a video game and accidentally became a 30-year-old otaku virgin.^[2] On November 6th, a screenshot of a scene from the episode was submitted to Imgur^[3] and posted to /r/pics^[4] by Redditor nokobueno. The post gained over 900 votes (93% upvoted) on Reddit and more than 534,000 views on Imgur in the next four years.

On February 1st, 2012, Urban Dictionary user herpaderpajerka submitted another entry for "wizard," defining it as "a 30+ year old virgin."^[6] On March 20th, Redditor MrSpaceCowboy submitted the question "If all it took to become a wizard was to stay a virgin until 30, would you do it?" to the /r/AskReddit^[10] subreddit. On July 8th, the image board site Wizardchan^[7] was launched for discussions regarding male virgins and their various interests. The name of the site was directly inspired by the internet myth. On May 29th, 2013, TV Tropes^[9] user judasmartel submitted a post about the 30-year-old wizard myth. On June 9th, 2015, YouTuber Forever Alone Feels uploaded a video titled "Wizard Status Achieved | 30 Year Old Virgin" (shown below).

[This video has been removed]

Virgin Age Meter

Virgin Age Meter refers to a series of comic strips about a virgin becoming a wizard by the age of 30. The earliest recorded version of the comic was submitted to the Finnish Philip Lahm Fansite Forums on June 3rd, 2010 (shown below).^[1] The comic started gaining traction on the English-speaking web in late 2011.^[8]

The strip has also inspired some derivatives, often expanding the original drawing with more stages.