That Really Rustled My Jimmies

About

"That Really Rustled My Jimmies" is an expression used to convey feelings of discontent or discomfort in response to someone else's post on image boards and discussion forums, most notably on 4chan.

Origin

The phrase originates from FunnyJunk. On June 16th, 2010, an image macro of a frowning gorilla with the overlaid text "That really rustled my jimmies" was posted by an anonymous user who has currently deactivated his account.^[23] On July 18th, 2012, the image had an overall score of over 100 with nearly 7000 views. The original photograph of the gorilla can be found in a Flickr post titled "nors"^[7] uploaded by Frank Wouters on July 4th, 2007.

The phrase went relatively unnoticed until December 15th, 2010, when a thread was made on 4chan's /r9k/ board about "times when someone really rustled your jimmies."^[1] It was told in the style of a normal greentext story on 4chan, except using the outdated language from the 1950s. The absurdity of the phrase "Rustled Jimmies" instantly led to a variety of responses to the OP, most notably the similar FunnyJunk image of the frowning gorilla.

Spread

Although remarked upon a couple times by others in the 4chan community, both the thread and the image of the gorilla went relatively unnoticed until later on when another user posted an image taken from the front of a box of Gorilla Munch cereal^[2] with the overlaid text "My Jimmies Remain Unrustled."

These two images came to define the idea of rustled and unrustled jimmies in later threads on 4chan's /v/ (videogames)^[10] /x/ (paranormal) and /tv/ (television) board;^[9] the meme spread to other websites such as Newgrounds^[6] and FunnyJunk,^[3] as well as on social networking sites like Tumblr^[5] and Facebook^[12].

On February 23, 2012, a thread was created on 4chan's /v/ board called Jimmies General^[11]. This thread was sticky-featured and lasted for over 650 posts before being archived. It is one of the largest threads dedicated to unrustling jimmies to date and it is the first jimmies thread to have been sticky-featured on 4chan. On February 24, 2012, the name of the /v/ board was changed from Video Games to 'Jimmies.'

James Ferrario Standoff

On April 12th, 2012, Modesto, California resident James Ferrario shot dead a uniformed deputy police officer and a locksmith who had come to evict him from his house. He then barricaded himself inside, and caused a standoff with local law enforcement.^[13] Shortly thereafter, a troll posted an AMA thread on 4chan's /b/ board, claiming to be Ferrario.^[14]

The news of the standoff was quickly picked up by Sacramento FOX affiliate KTXL Fox 40.^[13] A reporter made the mistake of featuring the aforementioned /b/ thread, and claimed that Ferrario had a gorilla fetish (due to numerous Jimmies-related images being posted), saying that he called himself "Jimmy Russel" or "Jimmy Rustle." Once /b/ got word of this, Jimmies jokes exploded over the thread, and spread across the site.

Le Monkey Face

On February 16th, 2012, a satirical rage comic featuring an outline drawing of the Gorilla Munch gorilla accompanied by the caption "le monkey face" was posted to /v/ (video games)^[16] board on 4chan. Many commenters speculated the comic was being used as a trolling scheme to convince others that the gorilla had been adopted by Reddit's rage comic community.

On February 18th, the comic was posted to the Aliens vs. Predator Galaxy^[17] forums by user scarhunter92, who claimed that "Reddit won't stop re-naming and ruining memes." On an unknown date, the comic was posted to the site 9gag,^[18] but it was removed sometime in May. On April 16th, a Facebook^[20] page for "le monkey face from reddit" was created, which received over 2,000 likes within five weeks. On April 19th, a thread titled "le monkey face thread go" was started by an anonymous user on the image remixing site Canvas.^[15] The thread featured several rage comics using the outline drawing, accompanied by cliches commonly found in comics on 9gag and Reddit. The comics also often use an excessive amount of le and forced memes to further mock the Rage Comic community.

On May 7th, a compilation of le monkey face comics was posted on the Internet humor site FunnyJunk.^[21] On May 23rd, Redditor Crazy_M submitted the 9gag watermarked comic to the /r/4chan^[22] subreddit in a post titled "hey guiz i just maed a le funny rage comik", which received over 1,000 up votes and 70 comments within two days.

Time Warner Cable Hack

In the early hours of March 6th, 2013, a hacking collective known as NullCrew announced via Twitter that the group managed to hack and deface the Time Warner Cable's customer support webpage with an image of the Gorilla Munch cartoon character (shown below). The act of cyber-vandalism was carried out in protest against the American cable company's participation in the Copyright Alerts System (CAS), a private anti-file sharing alert system launched in February 2013 as a joint effort by the five largest Internet service providers (ISPs) and major content companies in the United States. According to the Daily Dot^[24], the hack lasted for several hours between midnight and 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

Notable Examples

The expression has since spawned a series of image macros that are mostly based on cute illustrations or photographs of various animals, along with the caption conveying that either jimmies have been rustled or unrustled.

Videos

On YouTube, fans upload videos showing image macros of the Gorilla Munch gorilla narrated by various, mainly classical, types of music. These videos have the purpose of giving delight when one's jimmies have been rustled.

Search Interest

The result of Google Insights queries reveal that the phrase "really rustled my jimmies" began trending as early as in June 2010, which matches with the date of the FunnyJunk image macro.

External References