Speed Racer Is a Sociopath

Submission 13,040

About

Speed Racer Is a Sociopath refers to a notion that Speed Racer, the main protagonist of Speed Racer manga and anime series, is a sociopath who has no empathy for his friends and opponents and is ready to put them in harm's way to achieve victory.

Origin

Between May 9th, 2013 and November 5th, 2013, YouTube^[1] user BattleJesus uploaded a series of ten clips from Speed Racer 1967 anime series. In seven of the videos, Speed Racer is exhibiting behavior that can be considered sociopathic, such as calmly observing deaths of his opponents and refusing to lose on purpose to help his opponent win prize money necessary to save his sick sister. On May 9th, BattleJesus uploaded the first video,^[2] titled "Speed Racer Gives Zero Fucks" that gained over 1.2 million views in eight years (shown below, left). On November 5th, 2013, BattleJesus uploaded^[3] the video "Proof Speed Racer is a Sociopath" that received over 2.9 million views in the same period (shown below, right).

Spread

The videos did not received significant attention until May 2020, when it started being recommended to users by the YouTube recommendation algorithm. On May 26th, 2020, Redditor^[4] 501id5Nak3 posted the video "Proof Speed Racer is a Sociopath" in /r/TwoBestFriendsPlay subreddit, gaining over 110 upvotes in six months. On June 6th, Redditor^[5] Worst_Lurker posted the video to /r/anime subreddit, where it received over 100 upvotes in six months. As of July 9th, 2020, the video had over 770,000 views.^[6]

On August 4th, 2020, Twitter^[7] user @imBINGnotGOOGLE posted the video, with the clip gaining over 1 million views, 16,100 retweets and 50,700 likes in five months (tweet no longer available). An August 6th, 2020, repost of the tweet by iFunny^[8] user 16ixnt received over 77,300 smiles in the same period (shown below).

The viral spread of the clip prompted more clips of Speed Racer behaving in a way that could be considered sociopathic to be posted in the following days. For example, on August 13th, 2020, Twitter^[9] gimmick account @NoConViolence posted a clip from a parody video "Speed Racer Goes Crazy"^[10] which is cut in a way that presents Speed Racer as a murderer (shown below). The tweet received over 1.5 million views, 17,500 retweets and 77,300 likes in five months,

Additionally, more clips showing Speed Racer behaving in sociopathic way posted by BattleJesus and other YouTube gained a significant number of views following the spread of the meme.