Raimiposting

About

Raimiposting or Raimi-posting refers to an act of misquoting dialogue from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy in a prejudiced or insensitive manner, usually from the perspective of a moviegoer shocked by the decision to include offensive themes in a PG-13 film. Originating from 4chan's /tv/ board, the posts are often accompanied by remarks such as "Jesus Christ, Raimi" or "It was a different time".

Origin

On May 3rd, 2002, superhero film Spider-Man ^[1] directed by Sam Raimi premiered in the cinemas, followed by the sequels Spider-Man 2 ^[2] in 2004 and Spider-Man 3 ^[3] in 2007. The films followed adventures of the high-school student Peter Parker who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and develops superhuman abilities, becoming a superhero named Spider-Man.

In one scene of the first film, Spider-Man mocks his opponent Bonesaw by commenting on his outfit with a gay joke.

That's a cute outfit. Did your husband give it to you?

On March 21st, 2014, an anonymous 4chan^[4] user posted the quote to /tv/ board, with several commenters pointing out that the quip would cause outrage if Spider-man was released in 2014 due to the joke's homophobic nature. Through 2014 and 2015, the argument received further support in multiple /tv/ threads^[5][6][7][8], while on April 22nd, 2014, the joke was labeled "racist" by CinemaSins^[9] YouTube channel.

In one such thread launched on January 17th, 2016, an anonymous user provided a complex analysis of the phrase, reversing the message in the joke^[10].

On January 27th, 2016, an anonymous 4chan^[11] user writing under the nickname Sudowoodo posted a more offensive version of the quote in a /tv/ thread, giving the start to the Raimiposting trend.

Spread

Through 2016 and 2017, multiple threads and replies in which Spider-Man trilogy dialogs were misquoted in an offensive manner were posted on the /tv/ board^{[12][13][14][15]}, with many examples later resurging on the /r/4chan subreddit. In the quotes, Spider-man characters such as Peter Parker, Uncle Ben, Aunt May, Norman Osborn, Doctor Octopus, J. Jonah Jameson and others were presented as homophobic, racist or sociopathic. While the misquotes were usually written in a greentext format, the posts commonly ended with a brief comment in which the poster expressed shock and disgust at Sam Raimi's decision to include offensive dialogue in the films.

The word "Raimi-posting" was first used by an anonymous 4chan^[16] user in the thread launched on March 1st, 2016.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References