Alt-Tabbing in Video Games

About

Alt-Tabbing in Video Games refers to a series of memes that reference crashes, freezes and other disruptive effects that can occur when a player alt-tabs from certain video games, primarily those running on Valve's Source engine and Bethesda's Creation engine.

Origin

Alt-tabbing refers to the practice of pressing the alt and tab keys in combination in order to minimize it and/or switch to another open window.^[1]

Complaints about disruptive effects when alt-tabbing in video games based on Valve's Source engine, Bethesda's licensed Gamebryo engine and Bethesda's own Creation engine have been a popular topic of discussions on forums since the release of first titles based on those engines (examples shown below, left and right).^[2][3] Common effects of alt-tabbing, generally considered more severe in the case of Bethesda games, include crashes, freezes, long delays before gameplay can be resumed and inability to resume gameplay altogether.

On January 30th, 2014, Redditor^[4] Very_Juicy posted the earliest found meme that referenced negative effects of alt-tabbing in a video game based on the Source engine. The post received over 500 upvotes in the /r/pcmasterrace subreddit in six months (shown below).

Spread

On the same day, Redditor^[5] TeutorixAleria made a post titled "When I alt-tab in a Bethesda game," attaching a solid black image. The post received over 480 upvotes in /r/pcmasterrace six months.

The joke did not see further spread until November 16th, 2018, when Twitter^[6] user @riovevo posted a Go Crazy, Go Stupid meme that gained over 22,700 views, 730 retweets and 2,400 likes in three years (shown below).

Starting in November 2020, a number of GIF captions referencing the occurrence have been circulated. For example, on November 20th, iFunny^[7] user kekked posted a Walter White Breaks Down meme that gained 14 smiles (authorship unconfirmed; shown below, left). On November 30th, iFunny^[8] user mmwide posted a Coraline's Dad GIF caption that received over 120 smiles (shown below, right).

Memes about alt-tabbing in Source and Bethesda games saw further spread in 2021 with viral posts on Reddit and Twitter. For example, on February 9th, 2021, Redditor^[9] adam_dont_ask posted a meme that received over 23,300 upvotes in the /r/dogelore subreddit in six months. On July 6th, content creator facu posted a Regular Show meme that gained over 2,100 retweets and 9,200 likes on Twitter^[10] and 141,000 views on YouTube^[11] in four days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References