About

He Protec but He Also Attac is an intentionally misspelled variation of the expression, "He protects, but he also attacks," which is used online as a catchphrase to caption various image macros and memes featuring subjects preparing to defend against or engage an enemy.

Origin

The earliest known use of the phrase appeared in a YouTube^[6] video titled "He Protec but He Also Attac." from the channel Frisco68, uploaded on December 5th, 2012. The video depicts a weasel named Ozzy playing with their owner and attacking their hand, which is coincidentally the same weasel from the "Ozzy the adorable desk weasel" viral video. In roughly 13 years, the clip garnered over 14 million views, 481,000 likes and 24,100 comments.

On November 8th, 2016, the @fijichecks^[4] Instagram account posted photographs of a nude man wielding a light saber along with the caption "he protec / but he also attac" (shown below). This is the earliest known image macro meme using the phrase.

Spread

On February 5th, 2017, the b3pis Instagram^[1] page posted a picture of a stuff cow toy wielding a knife with the caption "He protec. / but he also attac" (shown below). Within two months, the image received more than 2,800 likes.

On February 13th, the sketchymemes Instagram page^[2] posted a similar image macro featuring screenshots from the film Cat in the Hat (shown below, right).

On March 15th, a 4chan user posted a Based Stickman variation^[3] of the image to a thread on /pol/ (shown below, left).^[4]

On March 30th, Redditor MrAdorDeplor submitted a post to /r/MemeEconomy^[5] asking how "he protec" memes were doing "on the market," along with a version of the image macro featuring comedian Lester Green (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References