Fixed That For You / FTFY

Submission 34,079

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About

Fixed That For You, also often referred to by its acronym, FTFY, is a catchphrase used as internet slang to disparage the opinion or work of another. The phrase, popular on reddit, is often used as a modifier, indicating that the user's previous statement was said in sarcasm.

Origin

The origin of the phrase is unknown, but some sources point to it first being used as a sincere programmer's shorthand. The first definition in Urban Dictionary, recorded on April 15th, 2005, simply defines the acronym as "Fixed that for you," with a non-sarcastic example:^[1]

"i can't see the image?"
-"its ok, i FTFY"

Other early definitions, like that on the computing forum Computer Hope, are also sincere.^[2]

Spread

Sarcastic uses of the term appear to have come into effect with the creation of reddit, where its use in this manner is incredibly common. On August 12th, 2009, a subreddit called /r/ftfy was formed, but it only ever acquired 90 readers. However, glossaries of the site's slang dating back to as early as 2011 record the sarcastic usage as the primary definition. The Make Us Of "Awesome Guide to Reddit" defines the term as being sarcastic.^[6]

"an acronym for “fixed that for you.” People use this if they are literally correcting something, like poor grammar or spelling, but you will also see it used sarcastically. For example: someone may say that that Apple is the best computer company around, and someone who disagrees may quote them with the word Apple changed to Microsoft with FTFY underneath."

On June 25th, 2013, the sarcastic definition was added to the entry on Urban Dictionary. As of April 2016, searches for both "fixed that for you" and FTFY bring up tens of thousands of results on reddit.^[4]^[5]

Example of the term in use on reddit.

The term also found widespread acceptance when it was tied to a photograph of Potato Jesus in an image macro.

Fixed It For You

Starting in 2013, a series of images with red markings that resemble edits made by a teacher on a school paper began appearing on Twitter] The most commonly shared version contained a definition of Atheism, crossing out the parts of the definition that the reader found incorrect. One of the earliest known variants (shown below) of this was posted on December 9th, 2013 by Twitter user @IllinLaneCraig.

Over the next few years, this effect was used on specific tweets, essentially refuting one's opinions by editing another's tweets and adding the caption "Fixed it for you." Following the 2016 presidential election, this became increasingly popular to do to United States President Donald Trump (examples below).