Fat Nerd Typing (Animaniacs)

About

Fat Nerd Typing refers to an exploitable meme that stems from a scene in the animated TV show Animaniacs that depicts a fat man wearing glasses typing at a computer, sometimes with his toes. The cartoon is meant to be a caricature of the computer nerd archetype and is used to mock people believed to fit the profile on the internet.

Origin

On September 23rd, 1995, the animated comedy show Animaniacs aired an episode titled, "A Hard Day's Warners; Gimme a Break; Please Please Please Get a Life Foundation." The episode was meant to parody how some zealous fans of the show nitpick every detail of every episode, as caricatured by the visual of a fat bespectacled man sitting at his computer and fact-checking various events in the show (seen below).^[1][2] The scene was uploaded on May 28th, 2010, and gathered over 700,000 plays in over thirteen years.

Spread

On December 14th, 2016, an anonymous 4chan^[3] user posted an image of the Fat Nerd from Animaniacs to the /co/ Comics board alongside the caption, "What if this fat slovenly fanboy from Animaniacs nitpicked at the inconsistencies in your personal life" (seen below, left). On December 8th, 2017, another user posted the image with the caption, "Have you ever seen fat guys in real life wear shirts that don't fit and their guts stick out like you seen in some cartoons? / Fortunately, I haven't. I'm just curious if this actually happens" (seen below, right).^[4]

On December 19th, 2020, the character featured in a meme posted by Reddit^[5] user /u/blitzinbruh on /r/okbuddyretard, gathering over 6,000 upvotes in three years (seen below, left). On July 24th, 2021, Twitter^[6] user @chaomix posted the image and gathered over 600 likes in two years (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References