That's How Mafia Works

This page is about the Mafia City Meme 'That's How Mafia Works'. For the page on all Mafia City memes, please see Mafia City – Subculture

About

That's How Mafia Works is an expression which parodies Instagram advertisements for the mobile game Mafia City, in which a suited cartoon man comes onscreen and points to an image with the caption "That's how mafia works". The meme was created and popularised by YouTuber Slazo in the video "Hilariously Bad Instagram Ads" and spread by Slazo's fanbase through the r/slazo subreddit.

The image is commonly used as an ironic meme caption, in a similar way to other meme captions such as This Is So Sad, and is often used to emphasize when something is considered tough or edgy. The caption is also commonly featured in deep fried memes, shitposts, as a macro image and as captions to Florida Man memes. The meme is also often used in conjunction with Mafia City memes, more specifically 'level --' and the phrase can often be seen in the comments of a mafia city related meme.

History

Mafia City is an online mobile game for Android developed by Yotta Games. It first appeared on the Google Play store on March 30th, 2017. The game is a mobile strategy game centered around crime families jockeying for position to become the head clan of a city. The game involves a lot city management and grinding for upgrades (gameplay shown below, left) (Example of Mafia City ads shown below, right).

Origin

On December 30th 2018, Australian YouTuber Slazo uploaded a video titled "Hilariously Bad Instagram Ads," in which he mocks various mobile ads for Mafia CIty (shown below). One of the ads he featured prominently in the video was of a series of clips of people committing crimes in the game, with each clip ending with a suited man coming on screen, pointing at the clip with the caption 'That's how mafia works'.

Slazo continued to bring up the joke throughout the rest of the video, with his community subsequently making posts about the reference on Slazo's Subreddit r/slazo. One of the most popular was a meme by user BoinkoMan, which gained over 400 upvotes and reached the top of the Hot page on the Subreddit.

Spread

After the meme became popular on Slazo's subreddit, users began to post the meme on other subreddits, most notably r/memes a post titled "That's How Mafia Works" submitted by Redditor mat383.^[1] The meme then continued to spread, along with a .png version created by Redditor ThatCandianJacket.^[2] The meme then started to become used in deep fried memes and shitposts.

Meanwhile, user GopnikMihail posted a "That's How Mafia Works" meme to r/dankmemes,^[3] where it received over 11,000 upvotes and 150 comments in the coming days.

Video Edits

On December 31st, 2018, Slazo uploaded a greenscreen version of the clip on his second channel, where people then started to make video edits of the meme, which helped the meme to spread further.

Some early video edits include a post by Greedy Boi (shown below, left) and another by Oshie32 (shown below, right).

PewDiePie Edits

On January 4th, 2019, PewDiePie uploaded his own video on the Mafia City ads titled '"Mobile Ads NEEDS to be Stopped! (Important)" (shown below, left), which mentioned the "That's How Mafia Works" meme many times and included a greenscreen version of himself re-creating the meme for people to use in video edits. PewDiePie's video caused his fans to start posting their own versions of the meme on r/Pewdiepiesubmissions.

Some early PewDiePie edits include a post by lopaca97 (shown below, left) and another by MaLe Recordings (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Related Memes

Lv. 100 Boss

The meme is commonly used alongside other Mafia City memes such as 'level -- ', which is also featured prominently in the Mafia City ads. In these ads, a rank is displayed above the characters in the ad, such as 'level 1 crook' or level '100 boss'. with characters earning new ranks as they increase their level. In many That's How Mafia Works memes and edits, the 'level --' meme is also used.

"Pump"

"Pump" is a bass house song by producer Valentino Khan and released by Mad Decent in 2017. Since its initial release, the song has garnered popularity through Musical.ly and TikTok with the #PumpLikeThat challenge. Later, advertisements for the video game Mafia City, which featured the song, inspired a series of video parodies.

Search Interest

External References