Signature Look of Superiority

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Part of a series on Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. [View Related Entries]

About

Signature Look of Superiority refers to an image of the character Count Dooku from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith next to text reading, "Signature look of superiority" referring to his facial expression. The image is taken from the 2005 book Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: The Visual Dictionary.

Origin

On April 2nd, 2005, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: The Visual Dictionary, a guidebook giving further context to characters, locations, and events in the film, was published through DK Publishing.^[1] The entry in the book for Count Dooku includes a ling of text reading "signature look of superiority" next to his head, as well as a line pointing to his face (shown below).

Spread

On April 17th, 2016, an anonymous user posted a close-up photo of Dooku from the visual dictionary, including the text, to 4chan's /tg/ board,^[2] writing "Dooku is best sith" (shown below, left). This is the earliest known upload of the image to the web. On July 19th of the same year, an anonymous user uploaded another photograph of the page to ME.ME^[5] labeled "me irl," garnering over 200 views in roughly 4 years (shown below, right).

On January 6th, 2017 an anonymous 4chan^[3] user posted a reaction image featuring a painting of classical musician Bach attached to an edited version of the "signature look of superiority" text (shown below, left). On February 1st, a similar meme was posted to ME.ME,^[4] replacing the image of Bach with another character and adding the word "slows" to the end (shown below, right).

The meme grew significantly in popularity over the next few years, particularly on Reddit boards like /r/PrequelMemes. On April 25th, 2019, /u/TheDarthKnightBegins posted an image macro referencing "Instagram" to /r/PrequelMemes,^[6] garnering over 8,700 upvotes in just under 2 years (shown below, left).

On February 20th, 2020, /u/arbyxelite posted another image macro featuring the image to /r/PrequelMemes,^[7] garnering over 29,200 upvotes in just under a year (shown below, right).

The phrase "signature look of superiority" started to take on life outside of the Count Dooku image as variants of it grew in popularity. In early 2021, the phrase became a popular post title on Reddit, associated with several high-interaction posts that don't have anything to do with Star Wars.^[8]^[9]^[10]

On January 29th, 2021, /u/Due_Pie5896 posted a meme using the Dooku image to /r/PrequelMemes,^[11] garnering over 33,800 upvotes in 3 days (shown below).