Pimp Vader

Submission 8,782

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About

Pimp Vader refers to a cosplayer who wore a white Darth Vader helmet and stereotypical pimp clothes to MegaCon 2011 convention, as well as several other similarly-dressed cosplayers. Online, the photographs of the cosplayer have achieved viral status and have been used in memes. In January 2020, the photos regained online popularity in memes following a viral Reddit post.

Origin

On March 25th, 2011, an unknown MegaCon 2011 attendee wore a white Darth Vader mask accompanied by a white jacket, white fur coat, a purple fur hat and a large clock necklace reading "Pimp." In the following days, the photographs of the cosplayer were uploaded by users on Flickr,^[1] Plixi^[2] and Reddit.^[3] An April 9th, 2011, post by Redditor^[3] faerielfire in /r/funny subreddit received over 640 upvotes in six months (shown below, top left).

Spread

In the following years, one of the photographs achieved viral status online and have been used in memes. For example, on May 13th, 2013, Redditor^[4] TAYLORNATOR48 posted a meme based on the photographs to /r/funny, receiving over 580 upvotes in six months (shown below, left). On May 31st, 2013, Redditor^[5] WorkFriendlyAcct posted another meme based on the photograph to /r/starwars (shown below, right).

On January 22nd, 2020, Redditor^[6] MC_Cat posted a "Skull Cow Isn't Real, It Can't Hurt You" meme based on the image to /r/memes subreddit, receiving over 32,900 upvotes in six days (shown below). On the same day, Redditor^[7] MrJod2002 posted another meme based on the image to /r/dankmemes, where it received over 15,600 upvotes in the same period (shown below, right).

On January 26th, 2020, Redditor^[8] Gary_October posted another photograph of Pimp Vader walking away from a Darth Vader cosplayer, with the post gaining over 52,800 upvotes in two days. In the following days, the photograph gained notable spread on Reddit as an object labeling meme. In some memes, Darth Vader was compared with a stormtrooper cosplayer known as Slavtrooper.