Ata

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About

Ata refers to an internet meme that emerged from a montage of the cover of the Brazilian comic book "Turma Da Mônica". The meme became popular in December 2016 and generated different image macro memes on social media, especially on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Origin

On July 16th, 2016, André Costa, a member of the "Turma da Mônica^[1] Shitposting" Facebook group, uploaded the meme template of the "ata" meme, which is a cover of the 2004 edition of the comic book “Almanaque da Mônica”. The cover shows the protagonist smiling in front of a computer screen and holding the mouse. In the post, André edited the cover to make the computer screen blank, as he asks users to create memes of "what is she doing?" on the PC.

Although it's not clear who created the meme, the post above was the main source for someone to add the word "ata" on the computer screen, which is derived from the Portuguese expression "ah, tá", meaning "ah, ok" in English.

Spread

The image started to be used as a reaction meme on social media in situations like “my reaction when…” or to respond to something in a sarcastic way. On January 3rd, 2017, the daughter of Mauricio de Souza,^[2] the comic book's creator and the inspiration for the character Mônica Souza, recreated the meme in real life and shared the comic book's official Facebook^[3] page. The post received 49,000 likes and 19,000 shares in five years.

The meme would be recreated again in July 2019, by the actress of the Live-Action^[4] movie about the comic book, "Turma da Mônica – Laços".

Other variations of the meme would be created later on. For example, on December 19th, 2017, the Facebook page Burn Book^[6] posted a version like this version with Disney's Hercules character Megara with the Portuguese version of the song "i won't say (i'm in love)"^[5]. The meme received 117 likes and 7 shares in five years.